Hi,

I'm having difficulty getting data from a textbox into a Controller. I've read about a few ways to accomplish this in Sanderson's book, Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework, but haven't had any success.

Also, I've ran across a few similiar questions online, but haven't had any success there either. Seems like I'm missing something rather fundamental.

Currently, I'm trying to use the action method parameters approach. Can someone point out where I'm going wrong or provide a simple example? Thanks in advance!

Using Visual Studio 2008, ASP.NET MVC2 and C#: What I would like to do is take the data entered in the "Investigator" textbox and use it to filter investigators in the controller. I plan on doing this in the List method (which is already functional), however, I'm using the SearchResults method for debugging.

Here's the textbox code from my view, SearchDetails:

    <h2>Search Details</h2>

 <% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %> 
 <fieldset>
     <%= Html.ValidationSummary() %>
     <h4>Investigator</h4>
     <p>
        <%=Html.TextBox("Investigator")%>
        <%= Html.ActionLink("Search", "SearchResults")%>
     </p>
  </fieldset>
 <% } %>

Here is the code from my controller, InvestigatorsController:

    private IInvestigatorsRepository investigatorsRepository;
    public InvestigatorsController(IInvestigatorsRepository investigatorsRepository)
    {

        //IoC:
        this.investigatorsRepository = investigatorsRepository;
    }

    public ActionResult List()
    {
        return View(investigatorsRepository.Investigators.ToList());
    }

    public ActionResult SearchDetails()
    {
        return View();
    }

    public ActionResult SearchResults(SearchCriteria search)
    {
        string test = search.Investigator;

        return View();
    }

I have an Investigator class:

    [Table(Name = "INVESTIGATOR")]
public class Investigator
{
    [Column(IsPrimaryKey = true, IsDbGenerated = false, AutoSync=AutoSync.OnInsert)]
    public string INVESTID { get; set; }

    [Column] public string INVEST_FNAME { get; set; }
    [Column] public string INVEST_MNAME { get; set; }
    [Column] public string INVEST_LNAME { get; set; }
}

and created a SearchCriteria class to see if I could get MVC to push the search criteria data to it and grab it in the controller:

    public class SearchCriteria
{
    public string Investigator { get; set; }
}

}

I'm not sure if project layout has anything to do with this either, but I'm using the 3 project approach suggested by Sanderson: DomainModel, Tests, and WebUI. The Investigator and SearcCriteria classes are in the DomainModel project and the other items mentioned here are in the WebUI project.

Thanks again for any hints, tips, or simple examples!

Mike