ASP.NET MVC: How to maintain TextBox State when your ViewModel is a Collection/List/IEnumerable

Question

I am using ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta. I can create a wizard like workflow using Steven Sanderson's technique (in his book Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework) except using Session instead of hidden form fields to preserve the data across requests. I can go back and forth between pages and maintain the values in a TextBox without any issue when my model is not a collection. An example would be a simple Person model:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public string Email { get; set; }
}

But I am unable to get this to work when I pass around an IEnumerable. In my view I am trying to run through the Model and generate a TextBox for Name and Email for each Person in the list. I can generate the form fine and I can submit the form with my values and go to Step2. But when I click the Back button in Step2 it takes me back to Step1 with an empty form. None of the fields that I previously populated are there. There must be something I am missing. Can somebody help me out?

Here is my View:

<% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %>
<% int index = 0;
   foreach (var person in Model) { %>
       <fieldset>
            <%= Html.Hidden("persons.index", index.ToString())%>
            <div>Name: <%= Html.TextBox("persons[" + index.ToString() + "].Name")%></div>
            <div>Email: <%= Html.TextBox("persons[" + index.ToString() + "].Email")%></div>
       </fieldset>
       <% index++;
   } %>  
   <p><input type="submit" name="btnNext" value="Next >>" /></p>
<% } %>

And here is my controller:

public class PersonListController : Controller
{
    public IEnumerable<Person> persons;

    protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        persons = (Session["persons"]
            ?? TempData["persons"]
            ?? new List<Person>()) as List<Person>;
        // I've tried this with and without the prefix.
        TryUpdateModel(persons, "persons"); 
    }

    protected override void OnResultExecuted(ResultExecutedContext filterContext)
    {
        Session["persons"] = persons;

        if (filterContext.Result is RedirectToRouteResult)
            TempData["persons"] = persons;
    }

    public ActionResult Step1(string btnBack, string btnNext)
    {
        if (btnNext != null)
            return RedirectToAction("Step2");

        // Setup some fake data
        var personsList = new List<Person> 
            { 
                new Person { Name = "Jared", Email = "[email protected]", },
                new Person { Name = "John", Email = "[email protected]" } 
            };

        // Populate the model with fake data the first time
        // the action method is called only. This is to simulate
        // pulling some data in from a DB.
        if (persons == null || persons.Count() == 0)
            persons = personsList;

        return View(persons);
    }

    // Step2 is just a page that provides a back button to Step1
    public ActionResult Step2(string btnBack, string btnNext)
    {
        if (btnBack != null)
            return RedirectToAction("Step1");

        return View(persons);
    }
}

Answer 1

<% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %>

You are never telling your form where to post?

Can you post your routes? It must be something with your routes.

Answer 2

As far as I can tell, this is not supported in ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta, nor is it supported in ASP.NET MVC 2 RC. I dug through the MVC source code and it looks like Dictionaries are supported but not Models that are IEnumerable<> (or that contain nested IEnumerable objects) and it's inheritors like IList<>.

The issue is in the ViewDataDictionary class. Particularly, the GetPropertyValue method only provides a way to retrieve property values from dictionary properties (by calling GetIndexedPropertyValue) or simple properties by using the PropertyDescriptor.GetValue method to pull out the value.

To fix this, I created a GetCollectionPropertyValue method that handles Models that are collections (and even Models that contain nested collections). I am pasting the code here for reference. Note: I don't make any claims about elegance - in fact all the string parsing is pretty ugly, but it seems to be working. Here is the method:

// Can be used to pull out values from Models with collections and nested collections.
        // E.g. Persons[0].Phones[3].AreaCode
        private static ViewDataInfo GetCollectionPropertyValue(object indexableObject, string key)
        {
            Type enumerableType = TypeHelpers.ExtractGenericInterface(indexableObject.GetType(), typeof(IEnumerable<>));
            if (enumerableType != null)
            {
                IList listOfModelElements = (IList)indexableObject;

                int firstOpenBracketPosition = key.IndexOf('[');
                int firstCloseBracketPosition = key.IndexOf(']');

                string firstIndexString = key.Substring(firstOpenBracketPosition + 1, firstCloseBracketPosition - firstOpenBracketPosition - 1);
                int firstIndex = 0;
                bool canParse = int.TryParse(firstIndexString, out firstIndex);

                object element = null;
                // if the index was numeric we should be able to grab the element from the list
                if (canParse)
                    element = listOfModelElements[firstIndex];

                if (element != null)
                {
                    int firstDotPosition = key.IndexOf('.');
                    int nextOpenBracketPosition = key.IndexOf('[', firstCloseBracketPosition);

                    PropertyDescriptor descriptor = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(element).Find(key.Substring(firstDotPosition + 1), true);

                    // If the Model has nested collections, we need to keep digging recursively
                    if (nextOpenBracketPosition >= 0)
                    {
                        string nextObjectName = key.Substring(firstDotPosition+1, nextOpenBracketPosition-firstDotPosition-1);
                        string nextKey = key.Substring(firstDotPosition + 1);

                        PropertyInfo property = element.GetType().GetProperty(nextObjectName);
                        object nestedCollection = property.GetValue(element,null);
                        // Recursively pull out the nested value
                        return GetCollectionPropertyValue(nestedCollection, nextKey);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return new ViewDataInfo(() => descriptor.GetValue(element))
                        {
                            Container = indexableObject,
                            PropertyDescriptor = descriptor
                        };
                    }
                }
            }

            return null;
        }

And here is the modified GetPropertyValue method which calls the new method:

private static ViewDataInfo GetPropertyValue(object container, string propertyName) {
            // This method handles one "segment" of a complex property expression

            // First, we try to evaluate the property based on its indexer
            ViewDataInfo value = GetIndexedPropertyValue(container, propertyName);
            if (value != null) {
                return value;
            }

            // If the indexer didn't return anything useful, continue...

            // If the container is a ViewDataDictionary then treat its Model property
            // as the container instead of the ViewDataDictionary itself.
            ViewDataDictionary vdd = container as ViewDataDictionary;
            if (vdd != null) {
                container = vdd.Model;
            }

            // Second, we try to evaluate the property based on the assumption
            // that it is a collection of some sort (e.g. IList<>, IEnumerable<>)
            value = GetCollectionPropertyValue(container, propertyName);
            if (value != null)
            {
                return value;
            }

            // If the container is null, we're out of options
            if (container == null) {
                return null;
            }

            // Third, we try to use PropertyDescriptors and treat the expression as a property name
            PropertyDescriptor descriptor = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(container).Find(propertyName, true);


            if (descriptor == null) {
                return null;
            }

            return new ViewDataInfo(() => descriptor.GetValue(container)) {
                Container = container,
                PropertyDescriptor = descriptor
            };
        }

Again, this is in the ViewDataDictionary.cs file in ASP.NET MVC 2 RC. Should I create a new issue to track this on the MVC codeplex site?