Serialize IList property on model when passed into Html.ActionLink - asp.net-mvc

Question

I'm trying to generate an Html.ActionLink with the following viewmodel:
public class SearchModel
{
public string KeyWords {get;set;}
public IList<string> Categories {get;set;}
}
To generate my link I use the following call:
#Html.ActionLink("Index", "Search", Model)
Where Model is an instance of the SearchModel
The link generated is something like this:
http://www.test.com/search/index?keywords=bla&categories=System.Collections.Generic.List
Because it obviously is only calling the ToString method on every property.
What I would like to see generate is this:
http://www.test.com/search/index?keywords=bla&categories=Cat1&categories=Cat2
Is there any way I can achieve this by using Html.ActionLink

Answer 1

In MVC 3 you're just out of luck because the route values are stored in a RouteValueDictionary that as the name implies uses a Dictionary internally which makes it not possible to have multiple values associated to a single key. The route values should probably be stored in a NameValueCollection to support the same behavior as the query string.
However, if you can impose some constraints on the categories names and you're able to support a query string in the format:
http://www.test.com/search/index?keywords=bla&categories=Cat1|Cat2
then you could theoretically plug it into Html.ActionLink since MVC uses TypeDescriptor which in turn is extensible at runtime. The following code is presented to demonstrate it's possible, but I would not recommend it to be used, at least without further refactoring.
Having said that, you would need to start by associating a custom type description provider:
[TypeDescriptionProvider(typeof(SearchModelTypeDescriptionProvider))]
public class SearchModel
{
public string KeyWords { get; set; }
public IList<string> Categories { get; set; }
}
The implementation for the provider and the custom descriptor that overrides the property descriptor for the Categories property:
class SearchModelTypeDescriptionProvider : TypeDescriptionProvider
{
public override ICustomTypeDescriptor GetTypeDescriptor(
Type objectType, object instance)
{
var searchModel = instance as SearchModel;
if (searchModel != null)
{
var properties = new List<PropertyDescriptor>();
properties.Add(TypeDescriptor.CreateProperty(
objectType, "KeyWords", typeof(string)));
properties.Add(new ListPropertyDescriptor("Categories"));
return new SearchModelTypeDescriptor(properties.ToArray());
}
return base.GetTypeDescriptor(objectType, instance);
}
}
class SearchModelTypeDescriptor : CustomTypeDescriptor
{
public SearchModelTypeDescriptor(PropertyDescriptor[] properties)
{
this.Properties = properties;
}
public PropertyDescriptor[] Properties { get; set; }
public override PropertyDescriptorCollection GetProperties()
{
return new PropertyDescriptorCollection(this.Properties);
}
}
Then we would need the custom property descriptor to be able to return a custom value in GetValue which is called internally by MVC:
class ListPropertyDescriptor : PropertyDescriptor
{
public ListPropertyDescriptor(string name)
: base(name, new Attribute[] { }) { }
public override bool CanResetValue(object component)
{
return false;
}
public override Type ComponentType
{
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
public override object GetValue(object component)
{
var property = component.GetType().GetProperty(this.Name);
var list = (IList<string>)property.GetValue(component, null);
return string.Join("|", list);
}
public override bool IsReadOnly { get { return false; } }
public override Type PropertyType
{
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
public override void ResetValue(object component) { }
public override void SetValue(object component, object value) { }
public override bool ShouldSerializeValue(object component)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}
And finally to prove that it works a sample application that mimics the MVC route values creation:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var model = new SearchModel { KeyWords = "overengineering" };
model.Categories = new List<string> { "1", "2", "3" };
var properties = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(model);
var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, object>();
foreach (PropertyDescriptor p in properties)
{
dictionary.Add(p.Name, p.GetValue(model));
}
// Prints: KeyWords, Categories
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", dictionary.Keys));
// Prints: overengineering, 1|2|3
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", dictionary.Values));
}
Damn, this is probably the longest answer I ever give here at SO.

Answer 2

with linq of course...
string.Join("", Model.Categories.Select(c=>"&categories="+c))