How to name textboxes in MVC when passing XElement

Question

I'm passing an XElement to my Edit view and want to have the usual HTML controls built for me and correctly named. The code I have is:

...
            <div class="editor-label">
                <%= Html.LabelFor(model => Model.XPathSelectElement("site[@id = 'customerName']").Value)%>
            </div>
            <div class="editor-field">
                <%= Html.TextBoxFor(model => Model.XPathSelectElement("site[@id = 'customerName']").Value)%>
                <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => Model.XPathSelectElement("site[@id = 'customerName']").Value)%>
            </div>
...

But this produces the following:

        <div class="editor-label"> 
            <label for="Value">Value</label> 
        </div> 
        <div class="editor-field"> 
            <input id="Value" name="Value" type="text" value="" />
        </div>

Why is this and how do I get the view to generate sensibly-named (eg) TextBoxes?

Thanks,

Matt.

Answer 1

You should really create a ViewModel to hold your view data instead of passing it the full xml element.

For example:

public class CustomerModel
{
  public CustomerModel(XElement xml)
  {
    this.Name = xml.XPathSelectElement("site[@id = 'customerName']").Value;
  }
  public string Name { get; set; }
}

And then simply: Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Name);

Edit: And also... Shouldn't your <%= Html.LabelFor(model => Model.XPathSelectElement( be %= Html.LabelFor(model => model.XPathSelectElement(