ASP.NET MVC Html.RadioButton Exception

Question

I haver a simple radio button list on my page that I render with the following in my view:

Gender
<%=         


        

Answer 1

This is very similar, if not equal to the checkbox issue: The Html.Checkbox() helper method generates a hidden field with a false value. If this field were missing, the browser would not send any data for uncheked boxes.

A radiobutton, however, is supposed to have a value, and the possible values can be more than one. In this case it is not so easy to handle the non-selection case, which I guess is the reason it isn't.

The workaround for me was to add a hidden field as follows:

<%= Html.RadioButton("gender", 1) %> Male
<%= Html.RadioButton("gender", 2) %> Female
<%= Html.Hidden("gender", null) %>