ASP.NET MVC3 Html.EditorFor and property of type object

Question

I'm creating user control in MVC3 application. My view model looks like that:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public object Value { get; set; }
}

The Value property could be an int, string or bool so I can't use [DataType] attribute.

When I create my view model:

var viewModel = new MyViewModel { Value = "" };

or

var viewModel = new MyViewModel { Value = 1 };

I assume that this code:

<%: Html.EditorFor(p => p.Value) %>

should render an HTML input of type textbox. Unfortunately nothing is being rendered.

Everything works fine when I use bool value or some not empty string. Here's an example:

var viewModel = new MyViewModel { Value = true };

Html.EditorFor renders checkbox input:

I did some research, but for now I didn't found solution.

Answer 1

Not a direct answer, but can't you just make your ViewModel generic:

public class MyViewModel<T>
{
    public T Value { get; set; }
}

This way, the Html helper method can resolve at compile time exactly what type value is, and exactly which editor to render.

Answer 2

I used:

 <%: Html.Editor("Value") %>

instead of:

 <%: Html.EditorFor(p => p.Value) %>

and everything works great! The textbox is being rendered for empty string or int value. What is wrong with expression p => p.Value ?