Question

This is the row I’m having problems with:

<% using(Html.BeginForm("Create#result", "Report", FormMethod.Post)) { %>

Using C# 3.5 and MVC2 the form was rendered like this:

<form action="/Report.aspx/Create#result" method="post">

Now with C# 4.0 and MVC2 the form is rendered like this:

<form action="/Report.aspx/Create%23result" method="post">

This causes problems:

System.Web.HttpException (0x80004005): A public action method 'Create#result' was not found

I think the new behaviour is problematic and I don’t want the hash escaped.
Where does it occur?
Can I change the behaviour?

The MVC version should be updated at some time, but I was working on another part when this behaviour started causing problems.

Update

I solved it by updating the form action using jquery on the client.

The form

<% using(Html.BeginForm("Create", "Report", FormMethod.Post, new { id = "frmReport" })) { %>

Javascript

var frmReport = $("#frmReport");
if (0 < frmReport.length) {
    var action = frmReport.attr("action");
    action = action + "#result";
    frmReport.attr("action", action);
}

Answer 1

This occurs deep within a MVC class System.Web.Mvc.TagBuilder meaning that there probably isn’t a lot you can do about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this code hasn’t changed, but that the underlying html encoding function was modified with .NET 4 instead.

private void AppendAttributes(StringBuilder sb)
{
    foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> current in this.Attributes)
    {
        string key = current.Key;
        if (!string.Equals(key, "id", StringComparison.Ordinal) || !string.IsNullOrEmpty(current.Value))
        {
            string value = HttpUtility.HtmlAttributeEncode(current.Value);
            sb.Append(' ').Append(key).Append("=\"").Append(value).Append('"');
        }
    }
}

That said I’m surprised this was working for you in the first place, I believe some browsers (IE) don’t support hashtags in form postbacks.