Html.Actionlink passing null values to controller - asp.net-mvc

Question

I have this method in my controller called "DirectorySearchController"
public ActionResult PersonDetails(FoundPerson person) //for some reason person is null here
{
DirectoryViewModel viewModel = new DirectoryViewModel();
viewModel.person = person;
return View(viewModel);
}
When I pass some parameters to it from the view using Html.Actionlink it returns a null value
<ul data-role="listview">
#if (ViewBag.Message == "NO RESULTS FOUND")
{
<li>#ViewBag.Message</li>
}
else
{
foreach (var employee in Model)
{
<li>
<div class="ui-grid-b">
<div class="ui-block-a" style="width:20%; vertical-align:middle"><img src="#employee.pictureURL" width="40px" height="40px"/></div>
<div class="ui-block-b" style="width:80%; vertical-align:middle">#Html.ActionLink(employee.name, "PersonDetails", "DirectorySearch", new { person = employee}, null)</div>
</div>
</li>
}
}
</ul>
But the funny thing is that when I pass the parameter without using the "new" keyword it passes the correct value. However, the problem is I need to pass multiple parameters so I need to use the "new" keyword.
<div class="ui-block-b" style="width:80%; vertical-align:middle">#Html.ActionLink(employee.name, "PersonDetails", "DirectorySearch", employee, null)</div>

Answer 1

I think you are not using the correct overload of ActionLink. Try with either of these
The first one should mostly work according to your case:
<%=Html.ActionLink(employee.Name, "PersonalDetails", "DirectorySearch", new { person = employee }, null)%>
<%=Html.ActionLink(employee.Name, "PersonalDetails", new {person = employee})%>
Just a recommendation here. Ideally I'd use an Input submit to post the data to the Controller. You may either use a Model class OR FormCollection in the controller side to retrieve the values you entered in the View.

Answer 2

You should not pass model to the controller action like new { person = employee } in Html.ActionLink. Because what happens is, when you generate the action link the object you pass is converted into RouteValueDictionary which will be passed to the UrlHelper to append the route dictionary values to the link.
When you pass an anonymous object like in the first case the RouteValueDictionary stores a single parameter with name person and to set the value it sees that you have passed an object, it can't serialize the complete instance and set it to the single property so all it does is set the type name of the model Employee as the value to the person. So you will see the generated link as http://someserver/DirectorySearch/PersonDetails?person=Models.Employee
If you pass an instance like you did in the second case then it iterate all the properties and create key/value pairs, while the keys are the property names and the values are the property values, finally they all appended to the link as querystrings. In the case the generated url will be http://someserver/DirectorySearch/PersonDetails?Property1=Value1&Property2=Value2
Correct
#Html.ActionLink(employee.name, "PersonDetails", "DirectorySearch", employee, null)
Wrong
#Html.ActionLink(employee.name, "PersonDetails", "DirectorySearch", new {person = employee }, null)
You can use anonymous object to pass route parameters to the action link but at the time you should not pass reference types but built-in types like integer, string..
Ex.
#Html.ActionLink(employee.name, "PersonDetails", "DirectorySearch",
new { Id = 23, Name = "Mark" }, null)