Editing and saving complex objects

Say you have the following object:

public class Address
{
  public String Line1 { get; set; }
  public String Line2 { get; set; }
  public String City { get; set; }
  public String State { get; set; }
  public String ZipCode { get; set; }

  public Address()
  {
  }
}

public class Contact
{
  public String FirstName { get; set; }
  public String LastName { get; set; }
  public String Telephone { get; set; }

  public Address BillingAddress { get; set; }
  public List<Address> ShippingAddresses { get; set; }

  public Contact()
  {
    // Assume anything that _could_ be null wouldn't be. I'm excluding
    // most "typical" error checking just to keep the examples simple
    this.BillingAddress = new Address();
    this.ShippingAddresses = new List<Address>();
  }
}

Assume the properties are decorated with [Required], [Display] and other attributes.

Then my controller (simplified for the sake of demo):

public ActionResult Edit(String id)
{
  Contact contact = ContactManager.FindByID(id);
  return View(model: contact);
}

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Edit(Contact contact)
{
  if (ModelState.IsValid) //always fails
  {
    ContactManager.Save(contact);
    return RedirectToAction("Saved");
  }
  return View(model: contact);
}

I keep seeing demos on editing an object like this in MVC, but they are constantly breaking out collections of an object in to their own form (e.g. Edit the contact, then edit a specific address off of a contact). I, on the other hand, am trying to editing all this information within the same page and am having no success. For example:

@model Contact

// simplified for brevity
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
  @Html.LabelFor(x => x.FirstName): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.FirstName)
  @Html.LabelFor(x => x.LastName): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.LastName)
  @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Telephone): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Telephone)

  <div>
    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.BillingAddress.Line1): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.BillingAddress.Line1)
    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.BillingAddress.Line2): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.BillingAddress.Line2)
    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.BillingAddress.City): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.BillingAddress.City)
    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.BillingAddress.State): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.BillingAddress.State)
    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.BillingAddress.ZipCode): @Html.EditorFor(x => x.BillingAddress.ZipCode)
  </div>

  <div>
  @foreach (Address addr in Model.ShippingAddresses)
  {
    <div>
      @Html.LabelFor(x => addr.Line1): @Html.EditorFor(x => addr.Line1)
      @Html.LabelFor(x => addr.Line2): @Html.EditorFor(x => addr.Line2)
      @Html.LabelFor(x => addr.City): @Html.EditorFor(x => addr.City)
      @Html.LabelFor(x => addr.State): @Html.EditorFor(x => addr.State)
      @Html.LabelFor(x => addr.ZipCode): @Html.EditorFor(x => addr.ZipCode)
    </div>
  }
  </div>
}

The problem I keep running in to is that the ModelState.IsValid never passes when I go to save the information back. Is there a trick to doing this, or is it just outside the realm of MVC? I would like to take an object like Contact and dump all the information on one page for editing, and have it re-save successfully, but I can't seem to get it to work. (My next step is to tie in ajax so you could dynamically add/remove "ShipingAddresses" on that page, but I need the save to work first--K.I.S.S)

Problems:

ModelState.IsValid is almost always false
Form elements for collection items frequently have the same names, so in this demo every Line1 in the ShippingAddresses collection dumps to the page as name="addr_Line1" instead of something like ShippingAddresses[0]_Line1 like I'd expect.

I guess ModelState.IsValid is false because you didn't populate the shipping addresses collection properly. This happened because you didn't use proper names for your input fields. Take a look at the following article to understand better what format does the model binder expects your input fields to be named in order to be able to reconstruct values back.

The reason your code is not generating correct input names is because you used this foreach loop in which the view lost track of the navigation context.

So try like this:

@for (var i = 0; i < Model.ShippingAddresses.Count; i++)
{
    <div>
        @Html.LabelFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].Line1): 
        @Html.EditorFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].Line1)

        @Html.LabelFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].Line2): 
        @Html.EditorFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].Line2)

        @Html.LabelFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].City): 
        @Html.EditorFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].City)

        @Html.LabelFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].State): 
        @Html.EditorFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].State)

        @Html.LabelFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].ZipCode): 
        @Html.EditorFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses[i].ZipCode)
    </div>    
}

Remark: notice that I have also replaced your duplicate labels with an EditorFor call to effectively generate input fields for those fields.

or even better using editor templates like this:

@model Contact

@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.FirstName): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.FirstName)

    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.LastName): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.LastName)

    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Telephone): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Telephone)

    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.BillingAddress)

    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.ShippingAddresses)
}

and then define a custom editor template which will automatically be rendered for each element of the ShippingAddresses collection (~/Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/Address.cshtml):

@model Address
<div>
    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Line1): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Line1)

    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Line2): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Line2)

    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.City): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.City)

    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.State): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.State)

    @Html.LabelFor(x => x.ZipCode): 
    @Html.EditorFor(x => x.ZipCode)
</div>

Now you should no longer worry about getting wrong input names. And not only this but you are reusing the address editor template for both your billing address and the collection of shipping addresses. It makes your views DRYier.