A Partial View passing a collection using the Html.BeginCollectionItem helper

Question

I made a small project to understand the answer from Stephen Muecke here: Submit same Partial View called multiple times data to controller?

Almost everything works.

Answer 1

First start by creating a view model to represent what you want to edit. I'm assuming cashAmount is a monetary value, so therefore should be a decimal (add other validation and display attributes as required)

public class CashRecipientVM
{
    public int? ID { get; set; }
    public decimal Amount { get; set; }
    [Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter the name of the recipient")]
    public string Recipient { get; set; }  
}

Then create a partial view (say) _Recipient.cshtml

@model CashRecipientVM
<div class="recipient">
    @using (Html.BeginCollectionItem("recipients"))
    {
        @Html.HiddenFor(m => m.ID, new { @class="id" })
        @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Recipient)
        @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Recipient)
        @Html.ValidationMesssageFor(m => m.Recipient)
        @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Amount)
        @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Amount)
        @Html.ValidationMesssageFor(m => m.Amount)
        <button type="button" class="delete">Delete</button>
    }
</div>

and a method to return that partial

public PartialViewResult Recipient()
{
    return PartialView("_Recipient", new CashRecipientVM());
}

Then your main GET method will be

public ActionResult Create()
{
    List<CashRecipientVM> model = new List<CashRecipientVM>();
    .... // add any existing objects that your editing
    return View(model);
}

and its view will be

@model IEnumerable<CashRecipientVM>
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    <div id="recipients">
        foreach(var recipient in Model)
        {
            @Html.Partial("_Recipient", recipient)
        }
    </div>
    <button id="add" type="button">Add</button>
    <input type="submit" value="Save" />
}

and will include a script to add the html for a new CashRecipientVM

var url = '@Url.Action("Recipient")';
var form = $('form');
var recipients = $('#recipients');
$('#add').click(function() {
    $.get(url, function(response) {
        recipients.append(response);
        // Reparse the validator for client side validation
        form.data('validator', null);
        $.validator.unobtrusive.parse(form);
    });
});

and the script to delete an item

$('.delete').click(function() {
    var container = $(this).closest('.recipient');
    var id = container.find('.id').val();
    if (id) {
        // make ajax post to delete item
        $.post(yourDeleteUrl, { id: id }, function(result) {
            container.remove();
        }.fail(function (result) {
            // Oops, something went wrong (display error message?)
        }
    } else {
        // It never existed, so just remove the container
        container.remove();
    }
});

And the form will post back to

public ActionResult Create(IEnumerable<CashRecipientVM> recipients)