Bind formValue to property of different name, ASP.NET MVC

Question

I was wondering if there was a way to bind form values passed into a controller that have different Id's from the class properties.

The form posts to a controller with Person as a parameter that has a property Name but the actual form textbox has the id of PersonName instead of Name.

How can I bind this correctly?

Answer 1

Don't bother with this, just write a PersonViewModel class that reflects the exact same structure as your form. Then use AutoMapper to convert it to Person.

public class PersonViewModel
{
    // Instead of using a static constructor 
    // a better place to configure mappings 
    // would be Application_Start in global.asax
    static PersonViewModel()
    {
        Mapper.CreateMap<PersonViewModel, Person>()
              .ForMember(
                  dest => dest.Name, 
                  opt => opt.MapFrom(src => src.PersonName));
    }

    public string PersonName { get; set; }
}

public ActionResult Index(PersonViewModel personViewModel)
{
    Person person = Mapper.Map<PersonViewModel, Person>(personViewModel);
    // Do something ...
    return View();
}

Answer 2

You could have your own custom model binder for that model.

public class PersonBinder : IModelBinder {
    public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, 
        ModelBindingContext bindingContext) {
            return new Person { Name =
                  controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.Form["PersonName"] };
    }
}

And your action :

public ActionResult myAction([ModelBinder(typeof(PersonBinder))]Person m) {
        return View();
}