Html.HiddenFor value property not getting set

Question

I could have used

@Html.HiddenFor(x=> ViewData["crn"])

but, I get,

<input id="ViewData_crn_" name="ViewData[crn]" type="hidden" value="500" />

To somehow circumvent that issue(id=ViewData_crn_ and name=ViewData[crn]), I tried doing the following, but the "value" attribute isn't getting set.

@Html.HiddenFor(x => x.CRN, new { @value="1"})
@Html.HiddenFor(x => x.CRN, new { @Value="1"})

generates

<input id="CRN" name="CRN" type="hidden" value="" />
<input Value="500" id="CRN" name="CRN" type="hidden" value="" />

Am I doing anything wrong?? Thanks

Answer 1

Have you tried using a view model instead of ViewData? Strongly typed helpers that end with For and take a lambda expression cannot work with weakly typed structures such as ViewData.

Personally I don't use ViewData/ViewBag. I define view models and have my controller actions pass those view models to my views.

For example in your case I would define a view model:

public class MyViewModel
{
    [HiddenInput(DisplayValue = false)]
    public string CRN { get; set; }
}

have my controller action populate this view model:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    var model = new MyViewModel
    {
        CRN = "foo bar"
    };
    return View(model);
}

and then have my strongly typed view simply use an EditorFor helper:

@model MyViewModel
@Html.EditorFor(x => x.CRN)

which would generate me:

<input id="CRN" name="CRN" type="hidden" value="foo bar" />

in the resulting HTML.

Answer 2

The following will work in MVC 4

@Html.HiddenFor(x => x.CRN, new { @Value = "1" });

@Value property is case sensitive. You need a capital 'V' on @Value.

Here is my model

public int CRN { get; set; }

Here is what is output in html when you look in the browser

<input value="1" data-val="true" data-val-number="The field CRN must be a number." data-val-required="The CRN field is required." id="CRN" name="CRN" type="hidden" value="1"/>

Here is my method

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult MyMethod(MyViewModel viewModel)
{
  int crn = viewModel.CRN;
}

Answer 3

I believe there is a simpler solution. You must use Html.Hidden instead of Html.HiddenFor. Look:

@Html.Hidden("CRN", ViewData["crn"]);

This will create an INPUT tag of type="hidden", with id="CRN" and name="CRN", and the correct value inside the value attribute.

Hope it helps!

Answer 4

Keep in mind the second parameter to @Html.HiddenFor will only be used to set the value when it can't find route or model data matching the field. Darin is correct, use view model.