Passing post parameters to action methods in asp.net mvc?

Question

I'm new to asp.net mvc. I'm having some trouble getting the values of parameters in my Action methods.

I have the following code:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult ToggleRecommend(string mode)
{
    byte[] requestContent = new byte[Request.ContentLength];
    Request.InputStream.Read(requestContent, 0, Request.ContentLength);
    string content = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(requestContent);

    return EmptyResult();
}

I access this method using an Ajax request. The request has these headers:

Accept  application/json
Accept-Encoding gzip, deflate
Accept-Language en-gb,en;q=0.5
Connection  keep-alive
Content-Length  8
Content-Type    text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Host    localhost:62718
Referer http://localhost:62718/microsite
User-Agent  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1
X-Request   JSON
X-Requested-With    XMLHttpRequest

and this body:

mode=off

My problem is that the mode parameter of ToggleRecommend is not being populated with the value from the request - instead, it is null.

The request is reaching my server correctly: the variable content in the method has the value mode=off and Request.ContentLength is 8 as expected. Also, Request.RequestType is "POST", as is intended. However, Request.Form is empty: it has no keys or values. (I don't know if that is relevant).

What is going wrong here? How do I get the value of my mode parameter to go into my action method?

The problem must be to do with post: If I remove the HttpPost attribute and do a request to the Url localhost:62718/microsite/toggleRecommend/?mode=off the mode parameter gets the value off as is intended.

Edit:

The request is being made with javascript using the Mootools library. I've included that part of the code below:

var req = new Request.JSON({ method: "post",
        url: "/microsite/toggleRecommend/" ,
        autoCancel: true, urlEncoded: false, secure: false,
        onFailure: recommendFail, onException: recommendFail,
        onSuccess: recommendSuccess
    });

    req.send({ data: { mode: 'on'} });

Using firebug, I can see the exact format of the request (and that looks fine) so hopefully the specifics of the javascript code doesn't matter.

I don't know much about raw HTTP, but with Accept=application/json, shouldn't the body of the request be formatted in JSON? — McGarnagle
– McGarnagle, Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 15:54
@dbaseman I'm not certain either, but I think that that header specifies what kind of data should be returned - the action method is supposed to return JSON. — Oliver
– Oliver, Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 15:55
oh, sorry -- as you mentioned, the problem must be that you're making a GET instead of POST request. — McGarnagle
– McGarnagle, Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 15:59
Your ajax call content/type is text/html, you need to specify to your controller that you are sending application/json information, otherwise he receives the info, but doesn't know how to distribute it to it's params. — Bardo
– Bardo, Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 16:09
Easy, mvc uses a specific class to parse json objects to binded elements on the controller, that class is called when the data received is identified as JSON data, if you pass plain text the controller consider it as a simple string and never calls that class. — Bardo
– Bardo, Commented Oct 3, 2012 at 16:21

Bardo · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-04 06:27:51Z

1

Your ajax call content/type is text/html, you need to specify to your controller that you are sending application/json information, otherwise he receives the info, but doesn't know how to distribute it to it's params

answered Oct 4, 2012 at 6:27

Bardo

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