How do I specify the columns and rows of a multiline Editor-For in ASP.MVC?

Question

In ASP.MVC 3, how do I specify the columns and rows for a multiline EditorFor (textarea)? I am using [UIHint("MultilineText")], but can't find any documentation on how to add attributes for the text area.

Desired HTML:

 <textarea cols="40" rows="10"></textarea>

Relevant Part of my MVC 3 Model:

[UIHint("MultilineText")]
public string Description { get; set; }

Relevant Part of my Razor cshtml:

<div class="editor-field">
    @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Description)
</div>

What I'm getting in View Source:

 <div class="editor-field">
     <textarea class="text-box multi-line" id="Description" name="Description"></textarea>
 </div>

How do I set rows and columns?

Answer 1

Use TextAreaFor

@Html.TextAreaFor(model => model.Description, new { @class = "whatever-class", @cols = 80, @rows = 10 })

or use style for multi-line class.

You could also write EditorTemplate for this.

Answer 2

In ASP.NET MVC 5 you could use the [DataType(DataType.MultilineText)] attribute. It will render a TextArea tag.

public class MyModel
{
    [DataType(DataType.MultilineText)]
    public string MyField { get; set; }
}

Then in the view if you need to specify the rows you can do it like this:

@Html.EditorFor(model => model.MyField, new { htmlAttributes = new { rows = 10 } })

Or just use the TextAreaFor with the right overload:

@Html.TextAreaFor(model => model.MyField, 10, 20, null)

Answer 3

This one can also be used with less effort I believe (but I am in MVC 5)

@Html.Description(model => model.Story, 20, 50, new { })

Answer 4

One option seems to be using CSS to style the textarea

.multi-line { height:5em; width:5em; }

See this entry on SO or this one.

Amurra's accepted answer seems to imply this class is added automatically when using EditorFor but you'd have to verify this.

EDIT: Confirmed, it does. So yes, if you want to use EditorFor, using this CSS style does what you're looking for.

<textarea class="text-box multi-line" id="StoreSearchCriteria_Location" name="StoreSearchCriteria.Location">

Answer 5

in mvc 5

              @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Address, 
              new {htmlAttributes = new {@class = "form-control", 
                   @placeholder = "Complete Address", @cols = 10, @rows = 10 } })

Answer 6

In .net VB - you could achieve control over columns and rows with the following in your razor file:

@Html.EditorFor(Function(model) model.generalNotes, New With {.htmlAttributes = New With {.class = "someClassIfYouWant", .rows = 5,.cols=6}})