Question

I’ve been working on an ASP.net MVC project that uses checkbox HTML Helpers in one of the views. The problem I’m trying to resolve is maintaining the checkbox state on a page refresh or when a user hits to he back button on their browser. I’m trying to use the HTML helper as a start, but I lack a complete understanding of how it works. I’m stuck on the third parameter that asks for HTML attributes. A snippet from a form that I have is as follows:

   <tr>
   <td><label for="Name">Name</label></td>
   <td><%= Html.Encode(entity.CONTACT_NAME)%></td>
   <td><input type="checkbox" name="Name" value="<%= Html.Encode(entity.CONTACT_NAME)%>"/> </td>
   <td><%= Html.CheckBox("Name", false, new {@name = Html.Encode(entity.CONTACT_NAME)}) %></td>
   </tr>

To avoid confusion, I have an object called entity that I declare before my form, that has several string values, one of which is CONTACT_NAME. I have a separate, standard, html checkbox right above the HTML Helper for testing purposes. When my form POSTs, I get the value if I select the standard checkbox, if I select the helper I get only true.

• What I want to know is, how I can get
  the value like I do when I select the
  standard checkbox?
• And how can I
  maintain the checkbox state on page
  refresh??

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

UPDATE:

@NickLarsen – Looked at the HTML code that was generated, the value is “false”

Made changes as per anthonyv’s and JonoW’s suggestions, my View is now as follows:

   <tr>
   <td><label for="Name">Name</label></td>
   <td><%= Html.Encode(entity.CONTACT_NAME)%></td>
   <td><%= Html.CheckBox("Name", false, new {@value = Html.Encode(entity.CONTACT_NAME)}) %></td>
   </tr>

But the generated HTMl still shows the value as a boolean “false” instead of the actual CONTACT_NAME.

As per NickLarsen’s suggestion, here is the code in my controller that checks the values.

public ActionResult ProcessRequest(Request request, FormCollection form)
       {
            var aChangeRequest = new ChangeRequest();
            TryUpdateModel(aChangeRequest, new string[] { "Name" },form.ToValueProvider());
//Way more follows

}

Answer 1

should “@name” be “@value”? It looks like you are trying to set the name twice…

I’m pretty sure you want to have the following:

<%= Html.CheckBox("Name", false, new {@value = Html.Encode(entity.CONTACT_NAME)}) %>