Html.TextBox conditional attribute with ASP.NET MV

Question

I have a strongly-typed MVC View Control which is responsible for the UI where users can create and edit Client items. I'd like them to be able to define the ClientId on creation, but not edit, and this to be reflected in the UI.

To this end, I have the following line:

<%= Html.TextBox("Client.ClientId", ViewData.Model.ClientId, new 
 { @readonly = 
   (ViewData.Model.ClientId != null && ViewData.Model.ClientId.Length > 0 
      ? "readonly" : "false") 
 } )
%>

It seems that no matter what value I give the readonly attribute (even "false" and ""), Firefox and IE7 make the input read-only, which is annoyingly counter-intuitive. Is there a nice, ternary-operator-based way to drop the attribute completely if it is not required?

Answer 1

Tip: Its the mere presence of readonly/disabled attribute that makes the element readonly or disabled in the browser.

@Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.Name, isReadonly ?(object) new { @readonly = true } : new { /*Some other attributes*/ })

Answer 2

Tough problem... However, if you want to define only the readonly attribute, you can do it like this:

<%= Html.TextBox("Client.ClientId", ViewData.Model.ClientId, 
  ViewData.Model.ClientId != null && ViewData.Model.ClientId.Length > 0 
    ? new { @readonly =  "readonly" } 
    : null) 
%>

If you want to define more attributes then you must define two anonymous types and have multiple copies of the attributes. For example, something like this (which I don't like anyway):

ClientId.Length > 0 
  ? (object)new { @readonly = "readonly", @class = "myCSS" } 
  : (object)new { @class = "myCSS" }

Answer 3

If you want to define several attributes, and conditional readonly without duplicate the other attributes, you can use Dictionary instead of anonymous types for the attributes.

e.g.

Dictionary<string, object> htmlAttributes = new Dictionary<string, object>();
htmlAttributes.Add("class", "myCSS");
htmlAttributes.Add("data-attr1", "val1");
htmlAttributes.Add("data-attr2", "val2");
if (Model.LoggedInData.IsAdmin == false)
{
    htmlAttributes.Add("readonly", "readonly");
}


@:User: @Html.TextBoxFor(
    m => m.User,
    htmlAttributes)  

Answer 4

$(function() { $("[readonly='false']").removeAttr("readonly"); });

Answer 5

And alternative is just to emit it as plain old HTML. Yes, the editor will make you think you are wrong, but that seems to happen quite frequently with VS2008SP1. This example is specifically for checkboxes which seems to be completely wasted in CTP5, but it gives you an idea how to emit conditional attributes.

<input type="checkbox" name="roles" value='<%# Eval("Name") %>' 
  <%# ((bool) Eval("InRole")) ? "checked" : "" %> 
  <%# ViewData.Model.IsInRole("Admin") ? "" : "disabled" %> />

Answer 6

i use this :

   @Html.TextAreaFor(model => model.ComentarioGestor, comentarioGestor? new { @class = "form-control" } : new { @class = "form-control", @readonly = "readonly" } as object)