How to disable binding of the route values in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

As I know ValueProviderDictionary takes values for binding from 3 places

1. From Post form
2. From Route values
3. From Query string

I want to be able to disable the second and the third options. The only solution I see here is to create my own custom ValueProvider (copy-paste ValueProviderDictionary source file and remove these two options from there).

Is this solution correct? Are there any more elegant alternatives?

(If the solution with a custom ValueProvider is correct where it should be initialized? In a Controller's action method or in a custom ModelBinder?)

Thank you

Answer 1

Override Controller.Initialize() and set the ValueProvider property in that method (after calling base.Initialize()).

To avoid reimplementing the entire ValueProviderDictionary, you could just subclass it. The only interesting part is that you'd have to copy a small snippet of ValueProviderDictionary.PopulateDictionary(). In your constructor, call the base constructor, then immediately this.Clear(), followed by this.YourCustomPopulateDictionary(). This should make your code much smaller.

Answer 2

I've made Action attribute and ValueProvider for solving this problem. Named it GetValuesAttribute and StrictValueProviderDictionary resp. You can set the source Form, RouteData or QueryString. For example if you want that ValueProvider would search for values in Form and maybe QueryString write the following above your method or controller:

[GetValues(ValueSource.Form | ValueSource.QueryString)]
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Create(FormCollection formValues)
{
   ...
   UpdateModel(myModel); //model will be updated from mentioned sources

The source code is placed here: http://codepaste.net/2kpzct. The only problem is that it won't work if you'll want to get populated model as a parameter.