What is correct behaviour of UpdateModel in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I am interested to know what you guys feel should be deemed \"correct behaviour\" in terms of the UpdateModel method in ASP.NET MVC.

The reason I ask he

Answer 1

But I still struggle with the idea of representing my entire object model in a form, especially if say I had 2 child objects and a couple of lists, I'm not sure how this would easily be mapped through; A stack of hidden fields depicting the entire object map? Just seems odd.

For this, you need to look into things like SubControllers and RenderAction. You can Google those. I use RenderAction a lot. It allows me to inject a widget into a page from its own controller method, without having to push separate data into the ViewData.

I don't think one should have to soely guarantee any data you wish to update to your DB model, should exist entirely on the form. I don't think I have one db table which could facilitate this, consider a "creation date" for example, or "updated date", I don't think it would be ideal to store this in a hidden field on the form.

You are right about that. Things like CreationDate, UpdatedBy should be handled in the Controller (actually the repository, if you are using repositories). By that time, you should already have all of the fields you need from the view model to update your database.

You may need to use "strongly-typed view model" objects. If you are not, or are not sure, review this page: http://nerddinnerbook.s3.amazonaws.com/Part6.htm