How to make ASP.Net MVC checkboxes keep state
- by myotherme
I have the following situation: I have a class Product that can have a confirmation from various Stations. So I have a ViewModel that holds the Product information, and a list of stations, and all the ProductStationConfirmations.
public class ProductViewModel
{
public Product Product { get; private set; }
public List<Station> Stations { get; private set; }
public Dictionary<string, ProductStationConfirmation> ProductStationConfirmations { get; private set; }
public ProductViewModel(int productID)
{
// Loads everything from DB
}
}
In my partial view for inserting/editing I iterate over the stations to make a checkbox for each of them:
<div class="editor-label">
<%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.Product.Title)%>
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
<%= Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Product.Title)%>
<%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Product.Title)%>
</div>
<fieldset>
<legend>Station Confirmations</legend>
<% foreach (var station in Model.Stations)
{ %>
<div class="nexttoeachother">
<div>
<%= Html.Encode(station.Name) %>
</div>
<div>
<%=
Html.CheckBox("confirm_"+station.ID.ToString(),
Request["confirm_"+station.ID.ToString()] == null ?
Model.ProductStationConfirmations.ContainsKey(Entities.ProductStationConfirmation.MakeHash(Model.Product.ID, station.ID))
: Request["confirm_" + station.ID.ToString()].Contains("true")
)
%>
</div>
</div>
<% } %>
</fieldset>
This works and I can process the Request values to store the confirmed Stations, but it is really messy. I made it this way to preserve the state of the checkboxes between round trips if there is a problem with the model (missing title, bad value for decimal, or something that can only be checked server-side like duplicate tile). I would expect that there is a nicer way to do this, I just don't know what it is.
I suspect that I need to change the shape of my ViewModel to better accommodate the data, but i don't know how.
I am using MVC 2.
