Question

Okay, I’m not trying to do anything super complex, I have searched, and searched, and roamed every blog and forum I can find. I am about to tear my hair out because no one just outright shows it working.

I want to use an IDictionary in my Model. Nevermind the reason why, that’s irrelevant. I just want to do something very simple, and understand what is going on.

Can someone please help me figure out the HTML I should be putting in the View to make this work right? Please? I have tried Html.TextBoxFor and it comes back null on the postback. I have tried manually using the index of the dictionary item, and it comes back null. I am really getting frustrated, and all I keep seeing is redirection to blogs that don’t answer the question.

Controller

    public ActionResult DictionaryView()
    {
        var model = new Dictionary<string, int>
        {
            { "First", 0 },
            { "Second", 0 },
            { "Third", 0 },
            { "Fourth", 0 }
        };

        return View(model);
    }

    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult DictionaryView(Dictionary<string, int> dictionary)
    {
        return null;
    }

HTML

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary<string,int>>" %>

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">

    <h2>Dictionary</h2>
<% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%>
        <%: Html.ValidationSummary(true) %>
    <% for (int i = 0; i < Model.Count; i++) { %>
        **// This is there I am stuck!** 
    <% } %>
            <p>
                <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
            </p>
    <% } %>
</asp:Content>

Answer 1

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ASPNETWireFormatForModelBindingToArraysListsCollectionsDictionaries.aspx

Example

<%
    int i = 0;
    foreach (KeyValuePair<string, int> pair in Model)
    { %>
    <p>Key: <%= Html.TextBox(String.Format("[{0}].key", i), pair.Key)%></p>
    <p>Value: <%= Html.TextBox(String.Format("[{0}].value", i), pair.Value)%></p>
<%
    i++;
    }
%>

Edit: This should work