Comments on: ASP.NET MVC 2 Templates

By: Gene Osteen

Gene Osteen — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:00:25 +0000

I’m stuck at trying to add the calendar. I keep getting the below error every time I add the DateTime View to the Editor Templates. when I remove the view everything works fine.

{“The model item passed into the dictionary is null, but this dictionary requires a non-null model item of type ‘System.DateTime’.”}

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By: Marshall

Marshall — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:10:42 +0000

What if you wanted to add to the list of Offices instead of selecting an existing one on the same view? How do you display a text boxs for Office Address and Country?

Thanks,
-Marshall

By: Ranco

Ranco — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:12:13 +0000

The first template (partial view) is inherited from ViewUserControl.

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl” %>
…

However, the String template is not only used for strings, but for all simple types (if not overridden).

See the tutorial ‘ASP.NET MVC 2 Templates, Part 3: Default Templates’ at http://bradwilson.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/aspnet-mvc-2-templates-part-3-default-templates.html and especially Richard Folland’s comment.

Removing the generic argument from the first line of the template resolves this issue.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:12:45 +0000

Great article, DalSoft! Thank you.

One problem though: when I supply an instance of EmployeeModel to the View, an exception is raised:

The model item passed into the dictionary is of type ‘System.Int32′, but this dictionary requires a model item of type ‘System.String’.

I would expect the Int32 property to default to the default editor (i.e. the build in editor).

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View(
new EmployeeModel
{
Id = 12
});
}

Btw, is it possible to override the selection of templates. It would be nice if various datetime pickers could be used (depending on the user’s preferences).

Ciao

By: DalSoft

DalSoft — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:14:05 +0000

Yes change the DateTime template, add the buttonImage parameter to the datepicker function example below:

$(document).ready(function() {

$(“< %=id%>“).datepicker({
showOn: ‘both’,
buttonImage: “images/calendar.gif”,
dateFormat: ‘dd M yy’,
changeMonth: true,
changeYear: true
});
});

By: DalSoft

DalSoft — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:16:15 +0000

Hi Daniel thanks for your feedback. I agree, but I wrote the examples in .NET 3.5 as I wrote this post just before .NET 4 went RTM (<%: is a .NET 4 feature). My latest update to the post uses <%:

By: Daniel Liuzzi

Daniel Liuzzi — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 06:25:54 +0000

DalSoft,

Great article with lots of useful information. A little nitpick: the preferred nugget to use in MVC 2.0 uses the colon instead of equal sign. (i.e. instead of (my apologies if WordPress strips the angle brackets). Equal sign nuggets are no longer recommended, because they are vulnerable to XSS attacks if you forget to encode your output. By using the colon instead of the equal sign, encoding is done automatically for you, so no more ugly Html.Encode()’s on your views.

Cheers.

By: DalSoft

DalSoft — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:57:58 +0000

You don’t need to use magic strings with templates when dealing with non complex types, just simply name the template DateTime.ascx. For complex types you can use the DataType attribute as described in the post.

For example Html.EditorFor(model => model.MyDateTimeProperty) works when you name your template DateTime.ascx convention over configuration takes over and the template is selected using the property’s type name.

Writing your own html helper extension is a solution, but you are rendering html/javascript using code which could be problematic, for example you will need to write a helper to replace each template, rather than using simple mark-up in a template.

I personally like the flexibility of being able to change templates easily by dropping files into the DisplayTemplates or EditorTemplates folder whenever I want to change how my Model’s properties are displayed. In the end though I guess it’s a matter of taste and what works for your situation.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:58:12 +0000

What if you create an html helper extension for the EditorFor(model => model.Property, “MyCustomEditor”)

For example, you have to render a date picker, instead of call EditorFor(…) for the date picker, you call Html.DatePickerFor(…)

… DatePickerFor(…)
{
return EditorFor(…, “DatePicker”)
}

This will keep the magic string to a minimum and is much nicer for other developers to use. What are your thoughts on this?