Attaching a hidden text field to a form MVC

Question

This very well may end up being a very silly question in a way but basically I have this "form" in a model that gets attached to my View as the form but I haven't been able to actually pass any data do it from the View. It only has two properties: an Id property and a String property. I've been trying to fill the String property with text from a hidden text box on the page with no luck.

Form code:

    public class AllocateListForm
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    public virtual string HiddenText { get; set; }
}

Relevant View code:

  <% using (Html.BeginForm("SaveExit", "User", new { }, FormMethod.Post, new { id = "selectExitPoints" }))  { %>
    <fieldset>
            <input type="hidden" id="HiddenText" />
    </fieldset>
  <% } %>

There is JQuery behind the scenes that fills HiddenText with text and I can assure you that it is filling. There is also JQuery behind the scenes that performs an Ajax submission and I can promise you that code works as it is used elsewhere in the application without a problem. When I perform the action that submits the form to the server and I go to my controller code that this points to, I have a breakpoint set so I can go into the console and check if the HiddenText field on the form has any data it is null. Can anybody point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

If you assign the input's name to be "HiddenText" the model binder should pick it up. I'm assuming that your controller action accepts an AllocateListForm as a parameter.

<input type="hidden" name="HiddenText" id="HiddenText" />

You can also use Html Helpers like so:

@Html.HiddenFor(model => model.HiddenText, new { id = "HiddenText" })

EDIT: Add an AllocateListForm as a property of your main model and then change the helper to be @Html.HiddenFor(model => model.MyAllocateListForm.HiddenText)