Using multiple partial views in MVC3 razor forms

Question

I have an insurance entry form that has contact information for two people. I have created a Razor partial view for the contact entry and put it in the form twice. The 'master' view model (VmApplicationForm) contains two instances of a subsidiary view model (VmPolicyHolder) corresponding to the two contacts as well as some properties common to both contacts. I am calling @Html.RenderPartial("_CreateOrEdit", Model.contactInfo1) and @Html.RenderPartial("_CreateOrEdit", Model.contactInfo2) in the page. With this arrangement (no surprises) the rendered code has duplicate IDs for the form input elements.

Is there any way of getting RenderPartial to prefix the IDs and Name attributes? I couldn't see this in the documentation, but perhaps I've missed something.

Do your forms need the Id and Name attributes atall?

Jamie Dixon
– Jamie Dixon

2011-08-03 16:09:52 +00:00
Commented Aug 3, 2011 at 16:09 — Jamie Dixon
– Jamie Dixon, Commented Aug 3, 2011 at 16:09

archil · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-03 16:15:27Z

4

Sorry, I don't have time yet to give you the example code, but i'll give you the idea. You should first create EditorTemplate for that probably called ContactInfo class. And then, in the base class(Holding that two contacts) edit view, you should write

@Html.EditorFor(model => model.contactInfo1)
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.contactInfo2)

This way, it will render that EditorTemplate and generate correct ids and names to inputs within it.

answered Aug 3, 2011 at 16:15

archil

39.6k7 gold badges69 silver badges83 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

CrispinH Over a year ago

archil. This was the quickest solution requiring only moving the Partial View to an EditorTemplates folder and changing the call to: @Html.EditorFor(x=>x.contactInfo1, "_CreateOrEdit"); I'm still working on the rest of the page but the HTML source code looks right.

David Keaveny Over a year ago

EditorTemplates (and DisplayTemplates for the read-only equivalent) are one of the unsung heroes of ASP.NET MVC 2. Good answer.

automagic · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-03 16:24:16Z

-1

What you are doing is trying to post a collection of items in a form- this can indeed be done in MVC (as well as in any web page/application that uses a FORM tag), however it requires some special handling to avoid id collisions and to correctly format the post data. Steve Sanderson has a great post on how to accomplish this:

http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2010/01/28/editing-a-variable-length-list-aspnet-mvc-2-style/

Essentially its a wrapper to append unique guids to element ids (in your case for each contactInfo), and create the proper array format in the tags. eg <input name="ContactInfo[f2cc4d6b-fc32-45e9-9d3d-fce54c3fede3].FirstName">

if your model is something like ContactInfo, you will end up posting like

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(IEnumerable<ContactInfo> contacts)
{
    // To do: do whatever you want with the data
}

answered Aug 3, 2011 at 16:24

automagic

1,0878 silver badges10 bronze badges

1 Comment

archil Over a year ago

He does not need to post a collection. He has got ViewModel with exactly two contactInfo items, as described in question

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Using multiple partial views in MVC3 razor forms

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related