ASP.NET MVC editor template for property

Question

Usually I render my forms by @Html.RenderModel, but this time I have a complex rendering logic and I render it manually. I decided to create a editor template for one property.

Answer 1

You are calling editor from your editor. As @RPM1984 rephrases @darin-dmitrov in comment in this answer: You can only have 1 template used at runtime for a given type, in a given Views particular context.

If you change your view to render textbox instead of editor, it works, I just tried:

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %>
<% var modelMetadata = ViewData.ModelMetadata; %>
<% if (modelMetadata.HideSurroundingHtml)
   { %>
   <%= Html.Editor(modelMetadata.PropertyName) %>
<% }
   else
   { %>
   <% if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(modelMetadata.DisplayName))
       { %>
       
<%= Html.Label(modelMetadata.PropertyName) %>
    <% } %>
    
<%= Html.TextBox(modelMetadata.PropertyName) %> <%= Html.ValidationMessage(modelMetadata.PropertyName) %>
<% } %>

If you want to render something else instead of textbox (i.e. dropdown list), you need to decide that inside your template for that property and render it. Or, if you have something common for more editors, I usually extract that into partial view in Shared folder, and just use Html.Partial("ViewName")

And, regarding labels are rendered regardless of DisplayName, to prevent label from rendering if there is no display name, change your if condition to !String.IsNullOrEmpty(modelMetadata.DisplayName) (I already put it that way in main code block)

EDIT This edit refers to question related to object.ascx default editor template. This is code of object.ascx, taken from Brad Wilson's blog:

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %>
<% if (ViewData.TemplateInfo.TemplateDepth > 1) { %>
    <%= ViewData.ModelMetadata.SimpleDisplayText%>
<% }
   else { %>    
    <% foreach (var prop in ViewData.ModelMetadata.Properties.Where(pm => pm.ShowForEdit
                         && !ViewData.TemplateInfo.Visited(pm))) { %>
        <% if (prop.HideSurroundingHtml) { %>
            <%= Html.Editor(prop.PropertyName) %>
        <% }
           else { %>
            <% if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(Html.Label(prop.PropertyName).ToHtmlString())) { %>
                
<%= Html.Label(prop.PropertyName) %>
            <% } %>
            

                <%= Html.Editor(prop.PropertyName) %>
                <%= Html.ValidationMessage(prop.PropertyName, "*") %>
            
        <% } %>
    <% } %>
<% } %>

This code indeed calls Html.Editor from inside of editor, but inside a loop which creates list of editors for properties of complex model. Each of these calls will invoke corresponding editor (i.e for string it will show string.ascx there etc), and only if you have some "unknown" property which is not string and there is no specific editor for it (i.e. byte[]) it will invoke object.ascx for it, but this is NOT calling editor for the current property (what you are trying to do):

The Object template’s primary responsibility is displaying all the properties of a complex object, along with labels for each property. However, it’s also responsible for showing the value of the model’s NullDisplayText if it’s null, and it’s also responsible for ensuring that you only show one level of properties (also known as a “shallow dive” of an object). In the next blog post, we’ll talk about ways to customize this template, including performing “deep dive” operations.

---

SUMMARY

Short version:

More editors for same property is basically solution for functional differences ("for yes/no I want here radio group and there drop-down)", and for visual differences partial views should be used, as you can nest them as much as you want, because you explicitly call them by name so there is no limits imposed, you are responsible to prevent any potential recursions.

Long version:

I have been investigating this, as I have the same problem, I'm using editor template to render