ASP.NET MVC editor templates and Html.EditorFor(...) - how to disambiguate the type name?

Question

When using this HTML helper in Razor syntax:

@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Prop1)

... the convention is to render the view under Views/<CrtView|Shared>/EditorTemplates/Prop1TypeName.cshtml.

So far so good. Notice that if the (qualified) type of Prop1 is my.org.ns.TheType, the file TheType.cshtml will be rendered.

But if I have a model with .Prop1 and .Prop2, and :

Prop1.GetType().FullName == "my.org.ns1.TheType";
Prop2.GetType().FullName == "my.org.ns2.TheType";  //same type name but different namespace

and I call this Razor:

@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Prop1)
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Prop2)

...I can't get it to display different views for the different types.

Is there a way to disambiguate this?

Maybe there's more than I know about the naming convention for the .cshtml file?

Answer 1

You can use this overload to specify the name of the editor to use. With this, you would name your EditorTemplates First.cshtml and Second.cshtml, then in your View, do this.

@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Prop1, "First")
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Prop2, "Second")

However, I would recommend avoiding reusing the same type name in the same project, even if they have different namespaces. This will cause confusion for someone reading the code, maybe even you down the road. That is a bigger issue than the framework not knowing what template to use.

Answer 2

When examining the ASP.NET MVC source code (line 164):

 // TODO: Make better string names for generic types
 yield return fieldType.Name;

It's seems that the development team is aware that this simplified approach (fieldType.Name for complex type) could be potentiality ambiguous. i hope they'll find an elegant way to let us choose templates in a more flexible way.

In the meantime, you can simply use the [UIHint] attribute, as follows:

[UIHint("ns1.TheType")]
public TheType Prop1 { get; set; }

[UIHint("ns2.TheType")]
public TheType Prop2 { get; set; }

Update (as per your comment):

The [UIHint] can only be used on a property or a field, hence you can't use it to decorate your class.

However, you can create your own attribute that derives from UIHintAttribute:

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property | AttributeTargets.Field | AttributeTargets.Class, AllowMultiple = true)]
public class MyUIHintAttribute : UIHintAttribute
{
    public MyUIHintAttribute(string templateName) : base(templateName)
    {
    }
}

Then decorate your classes:

[MyUIHint("ns1.TheType")]
public class TheType
{
    ....
}

[MyUIHint("ns2.TheType")]
public class TheType
{
    ....
}