Advice with Dynamic Forms in ASP.NET MVC

Question

I am working on rendering a dynamic form in an ASP.NET MVC view that will meet these requirements:

• Fields can be validated
• State is preserved when the for

Answer 1

I am by no means an expert, but if you are very new to ASP.NET MVC, then I recommend you start with the built-in functionality before rolling your own. It does most of what you have described, except does not encourage UI to be defined/constructed in the controller, since that is the job of the view.

Through the ModelStateDictionary you can add model errors and set model values which will then get bound to your form inputs on validation fail.

Update: Another way to look at it: ask yourself why you are using MVC over classic ASP.NET construction techniques, and then see if your proposed approach aligns with those reasons. For me separation of concerns was a huge reason, as well as granular control over the HTML generated, and I feel like your approach may subvert those things.

To address your edit specifically:

Steps 1 through through are against the MVC paradigm. Step 4, fine. Steps 5 through 7 are pretty much standard MVC practice and fully supported by the framework. E.g., Performing Simple Validation (C#) shows example of validation and presentation of error messages.