Better way of creating repeating HTML section - asp.net-mvc

Question

I've asked this once before but without any code to look at, here I have an implementation and I'm wondering if there is a better way to accomplish this.
I want a repeating html section like so:
<div>
<input id=id1 name=id1 type=text/>
</div>
<div>
<input id=id2 name=id2 type=text/>
</div
etc
This could contain any number of input boxes which map to the List of 'something' classes I have in the model, I presently do this with a View
#using (Html.BeginForm())
{
for (int i = 0; i < Model.Somethings.Count; i++)
{
Model.Index = i;
#Html.Action("Index", "HtmlSection", Model);
}
// other stuff
}
and a partial view
#{
int index = Model.Index;
}
#Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.Somethings[index].TheProperty)
Where the model looks like this
public class HtmlSectionModel
{
public List<Something> Somethings { get; set; }
public int Index { get; set; }
}
Finally the action looks like this
public ActionResult Index(HtmlSectionModel model)
{
// do stuff
}
To me this works but isn't ideal
The partial view can now only be used within this context, it uses the top level model rather than just the 'Something' class
I have to pass an index in the model in order to get unique name's for binding, if I didn't do this then textbox would have the same name/id
This seems to me to be a common pattern so others must have solved it in other ways?
I guess what I'm after here is the MVC equivalent of Asp.Net UserControls/Webcontrols (which seem to be child actions/partial views), but, combined with model binding which seems to require unique names

Answer 1

What I wanted can be accomplished with editor templates
Controller
public class UsesEditorController : Controller
{
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View(new SomeModel());
}
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(SomeModel model)
{
return View(model);
}
}
Model
public class Blob
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Address { get; set; }
public Blob()
{
Name = string.Empty;
Address = string.Empty;
}
}
public class SomeModel
{
public List<Blob> Blobs { get; set; }
public SomeModel()
{
int count = 5;
this.Blobs = new List<Blob>(count);
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
this.Blobs.Add(new Blob());
}
}
}
View
#model MyProject.Areas.EditorTemplates.Models.SomeModel
#using (Html.BeginForm())
{
for (int i = 0; i < Model.Blobs.Count; i++)
{
#Html.EditorFor(m => m.Blobs[i], "CustomEditorForBlob");
}
<input type="submit" value="Send data back" />
}
And Editor, which can be anywhere in the view folder as I'm referring to it directly
#model MyProject.Areas.EditorTemplates.Models.Blob
#Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name)
#Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Address)
This renders with ids like:
<input class="k-textbox" id="Blobs_1__Name" name="Blobs[1].Name" ...
So this gives me
List item
a repeating structure, just like UserControls in Asp.Net
The editor template only refers to the Blob class, it has no knowledge of the SomeModel class
Binding works (tested it)

Answer 2

It looks to me like what you are trying to accomplish is unique IDs for your inputs, and you certainly don't need a partial to do this. You can output your text box inside your for loop like the following:
#Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.Somethings[i].TheProperty)
This will generate a unique id something like id="Somethings_1_TheProperty". If you don't like that id, you can certainly make your own with something like this:
#Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.Somethings[i].TheProperty, new {id="id" + (i+1)})