Passing a user-typed input from View to Action Controller via combined action link and input in ASP.Net MVC 5?

Question

This is an ASP.Net MVC 5 project.

I have read the following useful post:

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

Which explains how to pass data from View to Controller in ASP.Net MVC . The main ideas in the post are either

1. using matching-model form-post (inputs) in the View and name-convention-parameters in Action Controller , or
2. make an action-link where we have an anonymous object having name-convention-parameters as route values match with the parameters in the Action Controller .

Now I have a slightly different case here... and would like to get some ideas for work-around.

Similar to method (2) above, I already have an action-link with anonymous object having name-convention parameters generated dynamically using razor like the following:

@Html.ActionLink("Detail", item.DetailsName, item.ControllerName,
  new {
    pid = item.Pid, eid = item.Eid, mid = item.Mid, cid = item.Cid,
    manNo = item.TypeItem == "Create" ? item.ManCreateNo : item.ManEditNo,
    caneNo = item.TypeItem == "Create" ? item.CaneCreateNo : item.CaneEditNo,
    command = userCanAccept ? "acc" : "pass", from = ViewBag.From
  }, null)

And (one of the possible) corresponding Action Controller called by the ActionLink looks like the following:

public ActionResult DetailsChange(int pid, int eid, int mid, int cid, int manNo = 1, int caneNo = 1, string command = null, string from = null, string comment = null)

Now, as you can see, the Action Link 's parameters in the View and the Action Controller 's parameters in the Controller match perfectly, except for one: the comment .

All the other parameters can be rendered by the View by razor at rendering time, but the comment is supposed to be a user-typed input (text).

Now, how do I pass this comment from the View to the Controller , together with the rests of the parameters, when the Action Link is pressed? Is there work around for this in ASP.Net MVC 5 ?

Answer 1

Generally you would use a form and post this data back, not use an ActionLink. But, since the ActionLink is basically an <a> with the HREF set to the action method URL, you can append it using javascript (in HTML attributes, if you give an ID of CmtLink, for example):

$("#CmtLink").on("click", function() {
    var href = $(this).attr("href");
    //I assume it doesn't exist, but it's good to check for an existing comment parameter
    //also assume at least one parameter present
    //Also assume comment control is textbox, not textarea
    href += "&comment=" + $("#comment").val();

    $("#CmtLink").attr("href", href);
});

On click, this can then always grab the most recent value entered, or could cancel the default behavior if comments are empty.