ActionLink sending a model of a complex type

Question

I'm trying to paginate the results of a "advanced search", I have a complex model that represents the search options;

int ZipCode
int MinAge
int MaxAge
Availability
    bool Monday
    bool Tuesday
    ...
    bool Friday
Requirements
    bool FirstAid
    bool DriversLicense

I'm using;

<%: Html.ActionLink("Next »", "Save", "Notification", Model.options)%>

Which correctly sends all the data at the first level, but anything that is a sub-object (Availability or requirements) isn't expanded in the URL, all I get is the class name and so I lose most of the search options when I click the link to change to a different page.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Somewhere down the line your Options object gets used as an argument to the RouteValueDictionary constructor:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc680272(v=VS.100).aspx

The code in that constructor does not recursively go down into the properties of your nested object. It only will reflect over the first level of your properties.

Answer 2

I ended up creating a overridden ToString() method, which converted the complex model to a query string. Then created a Flat model which mapped the query string and a convert method to pop me back out the original complex object.

I won't lie... It's a lot of a hack.

But it all works, and rather reliably.