should formcollection be empty on asp.net mvc GET request

Question

i am posting a simple action.

public void Login(FormCollection formCollection)
{
   ...
}

Even with few querystring values, the formcollection.Count is 0. Is it by behaviour?

Answer 1

FormCollection uses POST values and not what's in the query string. Your action should look:

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Login(FormCollection formCollection)
{
   ...
}

Answer 2

This is just a comment (I'm not allowed to post comments) to the above question within the comments, "how would this be done using http get"? I realize purists would say you're doing something wrong if you're using the form collection in a get (or maybe if you're using it at), but I simply don't agree; I'm using a get because I'm getting a FileResult, I'm not binding to my model object (for various reasons), and I can't separate my form fields into params because it includes a multi-select list. Thus, I'm just loading the collection myself:

var realCollection = new FormCollection( Request.QueryString );