MVC3 - How to correctly use @html.checkbox?

Question

I'm new to MVC3 and I can't figure out how to use checkboxes in MVC. I have a bunch of text in my view like

text1
text2
text3
text4
text5

submitbutton

This text is not related to any model its just plain text. I would like to place a checkbox for each item and a link it to the controller so that when a user selects some of the checkbox values and clicks on the submit button my controller picks up which items have been selected. I tried using @html.checkbox("text"+ index) and tried the controller to be

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult controller(List<string> list)
{
}

But that doesn't pick up the list of selected items. Can you tell me what i'm doing wrong or another way to do it?

Answer 1

What i would do in this situation is to make those items to be a property of my ViewModel.

public class MyViewModel
{
  public bool text1  { set;get}
  public bool text2 { set;get;}
  public bool SomeMeaningFullName { set;get;}
  // Other properties for the view
}

and in my Get Action method i will return this ViewModel to my View

public ActionResult Edit()
{
  MyViewModel objVM=new MyViewModel();
  return View(objVM);
}

and in my View

@model MyViewModel

@using (Html.BeginForm("Edit","yourcontroller"))
{
  @Html.LabelFor(Model.text1)
  @Html.CheckBoxFor(Model.text1)
  @Html.LabelFor(Model.text2)
  @Html.CheckBoxFor(Model.text2)

  <input type="submit" value="Save" />
}

Now this property value will be available in your post action method

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Edit(MyViewModel objVM)
{
 //Here you can access the properties of objVM and do whatever

}