MVC parent child kind of model form submit doesn't send child collection to controller

Question

I have a company model and it has employees list model as shown below

public class Company
{
    [Required]
    [Display(Name = "Company Name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public List<EmployeeModel> Managers { get; set; }
}

and the Employee model as below

public class EmployeeModel
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Email { get; set; }
    public string Phone { get; set; }
}

and my parent view is as shown below

@using (Html.BeginForm("CompanySignupSuccess", "Home", FormMethod.Post, new { @class = "horizontal-form", role = "form", enctype = "multipart/form-data" }))
{
    @Html.AntiForgeryToken()

    @Html.ValidationSummary("", new { @class = "text-danger" })
    <div>
        <div class="form-group">
            @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Name, new { @class = "control-label" })<span class="required">*</span>
            @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name, new { @class = "form-control" })
        </div>

        <div class="form-group">
            <label for="file">Logo:</label>
            <input type="file" name="logo" id="logo"                    accept=".png,.jpg,.jpeg" /> 

        </div>
        <div id="managerList">

            <div id="editorRowsManagers">
                @foreach (var item in Model.Managers)
                {
                    @Html.Partial("DetailsView", item)
                }
            </div>

        </div>

        <div class="form-group">
            <input type="submit" class="btn btn-default pull-right" value="Send" />
        </div>
    </div>            
}

and the partial view shown below

@model yourAssembly.EmployeeModel
<div style="border:1px solid;margin:20px; padding:10px;">
    Manager Details:
    <div class="form-group">
        @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Name, new { @class = "control-label" })
        @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name, new { @class = "form-control" })
    </div>
    <div class="form-group">
        @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Email, new { @class = "control-label" }) <span class="required">*</span>
        @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Email, new { @class = "form-control" })
    </div>
    <div class="form-group">
        @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Phone, new { @class = "control-label" }) <span class="required">*</span>
        @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Phone, new { @class = "form-control phoneno" })
    </div>

</div>

When I click on submit button, the model that goes to controller does have only Name and Logo properties filled in and the list object(Managers) is null, so I am not sure what is that I am missing here. BTW, I used the list of employees , because I would like add more employees by having a 'Add' button, and the Add button will just render another partial view.

public ActionResult CompanySignupSuccess(Company model)
{
    if (ModelState.IsValid)
    {
         //do some process
    }
    else
    {
        ModelState.AddModelError("", "Invalid Data entered.");
    }
    // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form
    return View("CompanySignup", Model);
}

Can anyone please help me on how to send the child list object along with some properties on parent class when the Submit button is hit.

Answer 1

You cannot use a partial to generate controls for a collection unless you pass the HtmlFieldPrefix (refer this answer for an example). However the correct way to do this is to use an EditorTemplate. Rename your partial to EmployeeModel.cshtml (i.e. to match the name of the class) and move it to the /Views/Shared/EditorTemplates folder (or /Views/YourControllerName/EditorTemplates folder).

Then replace your loop in the view with

@Html.EditorFor(m => m.Managers)

which will correctly generate the necessary name attributes for binding, i.e

<input ... name="Managers[0].Name" />
<input ... name="Managers[1].Name" />

etc (currently all your generating is duplicate name attributes (and duplicate id attributes which is invalid html)