difference between Html.TextBox and Html.TextBoxFor

Question

What is the difference between Html.TextBox and Html.TextBoxFor? As far as I know they produce same html output. Unless I'm missing something here. Please help me with this.

Answer 1

Html.TextBox is not strongly typed and it doesn't require a strongly typed view meaning that you can hardcode whatever name you want as first argument and provide it a value:

<%= Html.TextBox("foo", "some value") %>

You can set some value in the ViewData dictionary inside the controller action and the helper will use this value when rendering the textbox (ViewData["foo"] = "bar").

Html.TextBoxFor is requires a strongly typed view and uses the view model:

<%= Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.Foo) %>

The helper will use the lambda expression to infer the name and the value of the view model passed to the view.

And because it is a good practice to use strongly typed views and view models you should always use the Html.TextBoxFor helper.