How do I do custom forms in Sitecore MVC?

Question

I am trying to get a form in my MVC Controller Rendering to work. I have read these posts:

https://mhwelander.net/2014/05/30/posting-forms-in-sitecore-mvc-part-2-controller-renderings/

https://ctor.io/posting-forms-in-sitecore-controller-renderings-another-perspective/

I have tried these form options

My controller

public class VacanciesController : SitecoreController
{
    public ActionResult VacancyDetail()
    {
        var model = RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.GetRenderingModel<VacancyDetailModel>();
        var item = Sitecore.Context.Item;
        return this.View(model);
    }
}

with this attribute

public override bool IsValidForRequest(ControllerContext controllerContext, MethodInfo methodInfo)
{
    var controller = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.Form["fhController"];
    var action = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.Form["fhAction"];

    return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(controller)
            && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(action)
            && controller == controllerContext.Controller.GetType().Name
            && methodInfo.Name == action;
}

this is my view form code

@using (Html.BeginForm())
{                     
    <button id="btn-save" class="btn btn-highlight" type="submit">Solliciteer direct empty form</button>
    <input type="hidden" name="fhController" value="Vacancies" />
    <input type="hidden" name="fhAction" value="VacancyDetail" />
}

This seems to work now

@using (Html.BeginRouteForm(Sitecore.Mvc.Configuration.MvcSettings.SitecoreRouteName, FormMethod.Post))
{
    @Html.Sitecore().FormHandler("Vacancies", "VacancyDetail")            
    <button id="btn-save" class="btn btn-highlight" type="submit">Solliciteer direct routeform</button>
}

this goes to the correct controller and action. Bu my RenderingContext.Current.Rendering is null

@using (Html.BeginForm("VacancyDetail", "Vacancies", new { id = "1" }, FormMethod.Post, new { @id = "form1", @enctype = "multipart/form-data" }))
{
    <button id="btn-save" class="btn btn-highlight" type="submit">Solliciteer direct routeform</button>
}

This goes to the correct controller and action. But Sitecore.Contect.item is null & RenderingContext.Current.Rendering is null

What is the correct way to create a custom form?

Answer 1

I'd say you can either use the first or second approach.

I'm normally using the first approach (the one you got working now) for these sorts of things. What I do is having the same method action defined twice, one for get and one for the post, and in the post version I pass in the ViewModel, which I then rebuild the same way you are doing it. The action methods should be annotated correctly with the [HttpGet] and [HttpPost] attributes.

If you use Html.BeginForm(controller, controllerAction), you will experience that you are being redirected to the controller's URL (like /sitecore/api/{controller}/{action}), and not the page containing the controller rendering(s), as you'd expect. This is something to keep in mind when doing some sort of model checking, where you want to show the error message in the view, if the model is not valid.

Answer 2

The first option is the one I have used mostly. But for some form submissions we wanted to have the page context as we had to pull data source of some other rendering on the page. So, my two cents would be

• Check if you need page context, if so, pass in the page GUID to be handy
• If possible use MVC Ajax posts to restrict full page reload and exchange only what is required. Even here you can pass the page GUID.