ASP.NET MVC Only One of the RadioButton Input is Passed to Controller

Question

I am new to NET MVC and I try to develop an app where user will answer few questions,

I have the following models related to my question:

Question
Choice (includes question ID as FK)

and a ViewModel

public class QuestionChoiceViewModel
{
    public Question Question { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<Choice> Choices { get; set; }
}

In my view I want to display all questions with their responding choices as radio buttons, so i have the following lines in my view Choice/Index.

@model IEnumerable<WebApplication.Models.QuestionChoiceViewModel>


@using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Choices", FormMethod.Post)) 
{
    @Html.AntiForgeryToken()
     <div class="form-horizontal">
        @foreach (var q in Model){
            @:<b>Question:</b>

            @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => q.Question.questionText)
            <form class="form-group"> 
            @foreach(var c in q.Choices){
                <input type="radio" name="@c.choiceText" value="@c.choiceID" />
                 @c.choiceText 
                <br />
            }
            </form>
            <br />
        }

         <div class="form-group">
            <div class="col-md-offset-2 col-md-10">
                <input type="button" value="Back" class="btn btn-default" id="btnBack" />
                <input type="submit" name="btnSubmit" value="Submit" class="btn btn-default" />
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
}

I display and can choose from multiple questions without a problem.

And for the final sample of code, see my controller takes only a FormCollection type as paramater

public ActionResult Index(FormCollection form)

The problem: When I debug and see what is in the form -besides Token etc.- is the value of only the first radiobutton group. Lets say I have 10 questions but what I get passed in controller is whatever selected in 1st question. What did I do wrong?

Also, any tips about my style are most welcome, thanks!

You cannot use a `foreach` loop for your model. Refer [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30094047/post-an-html-table-to-ado-net-datatable/30094943#30094943) — , Jul 11 '17 at 14:18
Stephen is correct, the 'name' value of your radios needs to match the property name inside of the model. Right now, you have the choice text populating the 'name' attribute. — Ryan C, Jul 11 '17 at 14:31
@StephenMuecke Thanks for your time, your answer was useful for me. But when I changed my name properties to question ID, I could generate names for radio buttons exactly like I wanted. Because I wanted to group them with question ID anyways. It works for now, I hope I am not missing something else. — Alp, Jul 12 '17 at 11:38
If you claiming it works then you have clearly not tested it. There are multiple errors and dreadful practices with your code. Perhaps [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28055287/asp-net-mvc-5-group-of-radio-buttons/28057533#28057533) might help to point you in the right direction. — , Jul 12 '17 at 11:43

Loonquawl · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-11T14:44:00.043

At first glance, two things seem out of place:

The inner form tags <form class="form-group"> do not need to be form, and nesting forms can cause problems.
The name property of the radio inputs is used to group them together, so it should be the same for choices for one question, e.g. it should be @q.something instead of @c.choiceText

Also, name should be some short identifier instead of a text targeted at the user, as I supsect c.choiceText is:

ID and NAME tokens must begin with a letter ([A-Za-z]) and may be followed by any number of letters, digits ([0-9]), hyphens ("-"), underscores ("_"), colons (":"), and periods ("."). https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-name

This helped me. The problem was with the second point you made. I changed name properties with question's ID so they are grouped exactly like I wanted. Thanks for your time :) — Alp, Jul 12 '17 at 11:33

ASP.NET MVC Only One of the RadioButton Input is Passed to Controller

1 Answers1