I think you're missing Surface in your controller name. 

ContactFormController should be ContactFormSurfaceController, or it won't be detected as a SurfaceController and  throw the exception you mention.

But that won't get you were you (and me) want to be either. You'll just get another exception:
The model item passed into the dictionary is of type 'Umbraco.Web.Models.RenderModel', but this dictionary requires a model item of type 'YourModel'.

I agree it would be a lot cleaner to be able to post from a (child)action, but that doesn't seem possible atm.
Which kind of defeats the purpose of using MVC - the form is in a shared partial view - 'triggered' from the template's view - posting to an unrelated (surface) controller.

The error is occurring because you are calling ContactForm yet there are 2 ambiguous signatures that support calling those methods with no parameter, try specifying unique action names or specifying an ActionName attribute on one of them.

@ Timothy

My view has this model:  @inherits Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoViewPage<Site.Core.Models.ContactFormModel>.
Also at this moment the controller is called ContactFormSurfaceController, so thats not the case any longer.

The view contains this

@using(Html.BeginUmbracoForm<Site.Core.SurfaceControllers.ContactFormSurfaceController>("ContactForm"))

I also tried the regular

@using(Html.BeginForm())

so the form is going to be submitted to the page's url (/contact)

@Kevin

I do have different signatures. The post action has the model passed as parameter

At this point I'm using the partial as solution but I think it's not nice at all..

ignore this post

Hi Stephen

I know they are unique signatures but I think they might have to be differently named, do you get this when you initially load the page or after posting?

Hi Kevin,

Initially it works fine. This exception occures when you post the form.

Hi Kevin,

I tried unique action names in my initial quest but it didn't matter - as expected.

Using a Surface controller will get you past the error from the first post.
But you'll hit the one I mentioned earlier.

Seems like were stuck with using partial views for forms atm. 

It does look like using a different action name for post does work

  [ChildActionOnly]
        public ActionResult ContactForm()
        {
            var model = new ContactFormModel();

            return PartialView(model);
        }

        [HttpPost]
        //[ValidateInput(true)]
        [ActionName("ContactFormPost")]
        public ActionResult ContactForm(ContactFormModel model)
        {

In the template I do this

@Html.Action("ContactForm", "ContactFormSurface")

In the ContactForm view I do this and this does work.

@inherits Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoViewPage<Site.Core.Models.ContactFormModel>
@using Site.Core

@using (Html.BeginUmbracoForm<Site.Core.SurfaceControllers.ContactFormSurfaceController>("ContactFormPost"))
{  

Thanks!

Glad it works :-)

It won't work for me if I do something like this - you'll get the same exception again.

if (!ModelState.IsValid) { return CurrentUmbracoPage(); }

I don't get this issue, I have a validating form and it works fine, providing Ihave unique action names, what is the exact exception you are getting after using unique actions?

[ChildActionOnly]
        public ActionResult Contact()
        {
            var contactModel = new ContactModel();
            return PartialView(contactModel);
        }

        public ActionResult ContactPost(ContactModel model)
        {    
            if (!ModelState.IsValid)
            {
                return CurrentUmbracoPage();
            }

Exception

The model item passed into the dictionary is of type 'Umbraco.Web.Models.RenderModel', but this dictionary requires a model item of type 'ContactModel'.

Template View

@Html.Action("Contact", "ContactSurface")

ContactSurface\Contact.cshtml

@inherits Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoViewPage 
@using(Html.BeginUmbracoForm("ContactPost")){ .. }

@Timothy

You don't have a [HttpPost] attribute above your ContactPost action.

Kev

Hi Kev,

I actually do - was just struggling with the wysiwyg editor & must have deleted it by accident.

It shouldn't make at difference either I think?

/Edit: Also, the view looks like this (hoping it displays correctly this time around)

@inherits Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoViewPage<ContactModel>

@{

    Layout = null;

}

@using(Html.BeginUmbracoForm<ContactSurfaceController>("ContactPost"))

It will make a difference, but if you already have it then that's fine.

The type in your Contact view should be:

@inherits UmbracoViewPage

Jep, it's there.

It actually executes the correct action (ContactPost) as well, but throws somewhere after it returns CurrentUmbracoPage(). 

Hmm, this is a bit baffling then, that all seems legit, feel free to email me some of the code if you want me to investigate further.

Sounds great - where can I contact you?

/edit: email removed

I've emailed you, but here is what I think the issue is:

Hi Kev,

Thanks for looking at the code - I really appreciate it.
Your solution does seem to work!

I still think we're onto a bug here.
It doesn't make sense (to me at least) that the action invoked on a SurfaceController influences the rendering, and only in this specific case.

I have to admit I'm not familiar with the new routing and rendering code yet, but this might be a good opportunity to get up to speed on it.
Maybe it will make more sense then - in that case this behavoir should be documented and explained.

Thanks again! 

Hi Timothy

Agreed, I think this is a bug, it should make no difference what the action is called, might be worth one of us logging this behaviour here:

http://issues.umbraco.org/dashboard/#tab=Hints

Kev

Hi All,

I have replaced all the form's with the solution,  but now I ran in another quirk.
It seems that the ViewData is no longer passed to the model in this setup.

So when I do for example:

ViewData["ErrorMessage"] = "Something";
return CurrentUmbracoPage();

It ends up empty.

I will create an issue for it on the bug tracker.

When you execute a @Html.Action command, MVC does not pass/merge up the current view's ViewData dictionary to the ChildAction, though it does merge up the ModelState dictionary which is why validation works (though I cannot seem to find out where this occurs in the MVC source). If you want to access the ViewData that you've set on the master ViewContext's on a ChildAction being rendered from the master's ViewContext then you need to use:

@ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData["ErrorMessage"]

The ParentActionViewContext in this example is the ViewContext that is rendering the Umbraco template, not the ChildAction. That is because when you POST (whether inside of Umbraco or normal MVC), you are posting to a new Action and the rendering process starts from scratch, when you validate your model, update the ViewData, etc... this all happens on what will become the 'master' ViewContext when the view renders. This view then will render your ChildAction.

Hope that helps.

@Shannon, et al,

Sorry to hijack but out of curiosity, why wouldn't this work for either

"ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData["Prompt"]"

or

"ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData.ModelMetadata.Watermark"

in order to get the value of the placeholder for a form field of a child action?

@Jon: Not sure I am understanding your question correctly. This will return the value for an item called "Prompt" that was set in the "parent" view context:

ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData["Prompt"]

this will never work however:

ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData.ModelMetadata.Watermark

because 'Watermark' is not a property of ModelMetadata (System.Web.Mvc.ModelMetadata). If you had set an item called "Watermark" in the parent view context you could retreive it by this:

ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData["Watermark"]

Or by this:

ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewBag.Watermark

The latter is using the dynamic ViewBag property which is just a dynamic wrapper on the ViewData.

Shannon,

I was trying to figure out how to use the Prompt property of the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.DisplayAttribute so I could pass in placeholder text from the backoffice based on the SO conversation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5824124/html5-placeholders-with-net-mvc-3-razor-editorfor-extension

However I'm having issues getting the values set in the back office from the Surface Controller into the form model anyway so until I can figure this out the placeholder is moot no matter which way I go about it!

Thanks for your help!

Jon

Is there a way to avoid postback here and display message to user? On success or error?

I am getting this error. "The model item passed into the dictionary is of type 'Umbraco.Web.Models.RenderModel', but this dictionary requires a model item of type 'System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[abo.Models.Phone]'."

For more details click here Click Here

Thanks.

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