What is the best way to update only some fields of an object in MVC?

Question

I am trying to update a news post. The post has a date field called Created that is populated when the record is initially created. I don't include this when updating, so when using the below method, this is null and throws an error.

I am using MVC 5 and Entity Framework 6

[HttpPost]
[ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
public ActionResult Edit([Bind(Include = "Id,Title,Summary,Content")] Post post) {
    if (ModelState.IsValid) {
        db.Entry(post).State = EntityState.Modified;
        db.SaveChanges();

        return RedirectToAction("Index");
    }
    return View(post);
}

This method does work but it seems a bit clunky.

[HttpPost]
[ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
public ActionResult Edit([Bind(Include = "Id,Title,Summary,Content")] Post post) {
    if (ModelState.IsValid) {
        var newsPost = db.Posts.Find(post.Id);
        if (newsPost == null) { return new HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); }
        newsPost.Title = post.Title;
        newsPost.Summary = post.Summary;
        newsPost.Content = post.Content;
        db.Entry(newsPost).State = EntityState.Modified;
        db.SaveChanges();

        return RedirectToAction("Index");
    }
    return View(post);
}

What is the best practice method of doing this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

EF also has a simple built-in "AutoMapper" that works with scalar values.

public class PostViewModel()
{
     public string Id {get;set;}
     public string Title {get;set;}
     public string Summary {get;set;}
     public string Content {get;set;}
}

public ActionResult Edit(PostViewModel viewModel)
{
    if (ModelState.IsValid) {
        var newsPost = db.Posts.Find(post.Id);
        ...
        db.Entry(newsPost).CurrentValues.SetValues(viewModel);
        ...
    }
}