What's the best way to extract multiple fields from an asp.net form into a C# list or array ready for processing ?

Question

I need to extract multiple text/dropdown list fields from an asp.net form and format appropriately ready for sending to recipient via email.

What's the best way of reading those fields without having to hard code each item such as:

item1 = InputField1.Text; 
item2 = InputField2.Text;

I will have about 10 or 20 items on the same input form.

Answer 1

Not sure why you're trying to do this - without more info it seems like you're probably taking an approach that is sub-optimal, but I digress. The form field values are also accessible via the Request.Form collection, which is a NameValueCollection if I recall. You could access that as-is like so:

foreach (string key in Request.Form.Keys) {
    string value = Request.Form[key];
    // format and use value here
}

If you need to format specific fields based on the field and type of data, you could do a copy to a dictionary like so:

Dictionary<string, object> values = new Dictionary<string, object>();

foreach (string key in Request.Form.Keys) {
    if (key.Equals("SpecialFieldName")) {
        // for example, parse an int
        values.Add(key, int.parse(Request.Form[key]));
    } else {
        // no special formatting required
        values.Add(key, Request.Form[key]);
    }
}

Answer 2

@Chris has given you the basic idea -- copy out of the Request.Form collection. I would suggest that to make it easier, you give the inputs names that you can easily detect from the other fields on the page, some of which may be placed there for you by the framework. Perhaps use a naming scheme like "Email.FirstName", "Email.LastName", "Email.Address", then you can do:

   foreach (string key in Request.Form.Keys)
   {
        if (key.StartsWith("Email."))
        {
           ...Process this key...
        }
   }

Note: if the page uses a MasterPage your check will need to take the name mangling by the framework into account.