ASP.Net MVC How to pass data from view to controller

asp.net, asp.net-mvc

Solution

You can do it with ViewModels like how you passed data from your controller to view.

Assume you have a viewmodel like this

public class ReportViewModel
{
   public string Name { set;get;}
}

and in your GET Action,

public ActionResult Report()
{
  return View(new ReportViewModel());
}

and your view must be strongly typed to `ReportViewModel`

@model ReportViewModel
@using(Html.BeginForm())
{
  Report NAme : @Html.TextBoxFor(s=>s.Name)
  <input type="submit" value="Generate report" />
}

and in your HttpPost action method in your controller

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Report(ReportViewModel model)
{
  //check for model.Name property value now
  //to do : Return something
}

OR Simply, you can do this without the POCO classes (Viewmodels)

@using(Html.BeginForm())
{
   <input type="text" name="reportName" />
   <input type="submit" />
}

and in your HttpPost action, use a parameter with same name as the textbox name.

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Report(string reportName)
{
  //check for reportName parameter value now
  //to do : Return something
}

EDIT : As per the comment

If you want to post to another controller, you may use this overload of the BeginForm method.

@using(Html.BeginForm("Report","SomeOtherControllerName"))
{
   <input type="text" name="reportName" />
   <input type="submit" />
}

Passing data from action method to view ?

You can use the same view model, simply set the property values in your GET action method

public ActionResult Report()
{
  var vm = new ReportViewModel();
  vm.Name="SuperManReport";
  return View(vm);
}

and in your view

@model ReportViewModel
<h2>@Model.Name</h2>
<p>Can have input field with value set in action method</p>
@using(Html.BeginForm())
{
  @Html.TextBoxFor(s=>s.Name)
  <input type="submit" />
}

Problem

I am completely new to ASP.Net and I am sure this is a very basic question I have a View in which there is a link to generate report but to be able to generate report I must ask the user to provide a suitable text name as well. So far I have been able to pass data from server to view using Models passed from my controller to view, but I am not sure how to Pass data from view to my controller. I just need to pass a string from view to controller in this case. Any advice with example will be appreciated. UPDATE I understand I have to post the data back to server but how does that realize in the form of razorhtml code and controller?

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