ASP.NET MVC Model Binding into a List

Question

In my ASP.NET MVC site, part of a feature allows the user to enter the hours when a certain venue is open.

I've decided to store these hours in a VenueHours table in my database, with a FK-to-PK relationship to a Venues table, as well as DayOfWeek, OpeningTime, and ClosingTime parameters.

In my View, I want to allow the user to only input the times they know about; in other words, some days may not be filled in for a Venue. I'm thinking of creating checkboxes that the user can check to enable the OpeningTime and ClosingTime fields for the DayOfWeek that the checkbox belongs to.

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My question relates to how to pass this information to my HttpPost Controller Action.

As I know the maximum amount of Days that can be passed in (7), I could of course just write 7 nullable VenueHour parameters into my Action, but I'm sure there's a better way.

Can I somehow bind the View information into a List that is passed to my Action? This will also help me if I run into a scenario where there is no limit to how much information the user can fill in.

Answer 1

Scott Hanselman posted a very good article about how the default model binder deals with collections, arrays and dictionaries. It's great if you don't want to write a custom model binder, although writing a custom model binder isn't that big a deal.

Answer 2

Please try the following steps

1 - Place all the input boxes (which can be populated by DatePicker JQuery control) inside a div in the aspx view.

2 - using Jquery selectors to capture all the values(inside the above specified DIV) that needs to be posted to the Action method , into a JavaScript array in the Client Side.

please refer Filtering input elements inside DIV

var enteredVenueHours = new Array();
for(var i=0;i < inputsInsideDiv.length;i++)
{
    // add the elements to the JS array
}

3 - Use the Jquery post to send the enteredVenueHours back to the controller action**

$.post('<%=Url.Action("ActionMethod")%>',{ EnteredVenueHours: enteredVenueHours,function (data)
{
     // Udpate status to be displayed here. 
});

4 - Make sure the Controller action method has the following Signature

[AcceptVerbs(HTTP.Post)]
public ActionResult ActionMethod(List<string> EnteredVenueHours)
{
     // Have the DB persistance logic .
}