Contents not saving when edited in view - html

Question

I hope there is a simple answer to this problem which I'm just not seeing.
I am developing an asp.net MVC 4 application.
Basically I want to allow the user to edit the contents of a previous entry(newsArticle) they would have made (sounds easy)
This entry consist's of a date, two blocks of text, (Title and body) an img.
These entries correspond to properties of a model, which also include, ID , img name and status.
I have successfully manged to enter, save and retrieve all the data when needed.
However when I run the program and try and edit a previous entry it only saves the Title and the body text and removes the values that were there, for date, img, img name and status.
Is this related to the textboxes used in the view ? Why are those values kept and the others not.
Just to point out when I run and select an entry all the data is shown correctly but when I click save values are removed (date, img name , status)
Any thoughts.....
Controller....
public ActionResult Edit(int id)
{
String encodedBody;
NewsArticle newsArticle = _newsArticle.Get(id);
encodedBody = HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(newsArticle.Body.ToString());
newsArticle.Body = encodedBody;
return View(newsArticle);
}
// POST: /Article/Edit/5
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Edit(NewsArticle newsArticle)
{
try
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
db.Entry(newsArticle).State = EntityState.Modified;
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
}
catch (System.Data.DataException)
{
//Log th error(add a variable name after DataExpection)
ModelState.AddModelError("", "Unable to save changes. Try again, and if the problem persists see your system administrator.");
}
return View(newsArticle);
}
View.......
#using (Html.BeginForm("Edit", "Admin", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data", #class = "form-horizontal", id = "newsEditForm"}))
{
#Html.ValidationSummary()
#Html.HiddenFor(model => model.ID)
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Posted on :</label>
<div class="controls">
<span class="text">#Model.DateCreated.Value.ToShortDateString()</span>
#*#Html.LabelFor(n => n.DateCreated)*#
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">#Html.LabelFor(n => n.Title)</label>
<div class="controls">
#Html.TextBoxFor(n => n.Title, new { #class = "span4 m-wrap", rows = 1})
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">#Html.LabelFor(n => n.Body)</label>
<div class="controls">
#Html.TextAreaFor(n => n.Body, new { #class = "span12 ckeditor m-wrap", rows = 4 })
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Selected Image </label>
<label class="controls">#Html.DisplayTextFor(model => model.ImageName)</label>
#* <div class="span4 blog-img blog-tag-data">
<div class="editor-field">
<input type="file" name="Article" id="ArticleImage"/>
</div>
</div>*#
</div>
<div class="form-actions">
<button type="submit" class="btn green" id="submitnews"><i class="icon-ok"></i>Submit</button>
#Html.ActionLink("Cancel", "ArticleList", "Admin", null, new { #class = "btn blue"})
#*<button type="button" class="btn blue" onclick="location.href='ArticleList','Admin'">Cancel</button>*#
</div>
}

Answer 1

Your problem is you're saving the newsArticle that's posted back directly to the DB. The posted newsArticle contains a null entry for the image, date, img name and status because those fields don't exist in your form. You really shouldn't pass domain models back to your edit for this and other security reasons. However, this is a quick fix to your issue
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Edit(NewsArticle newsArticle)
{
try
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
NewsArticle savedArticle= _newsArticle.Get(newsArticle.Id);
savedArticle.Body = newsArticle.Body
savedArticle.Title = newsArticle.Title
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
}
catch (System.Data.DataException)
{
//Log th error(add a variable name after DataExpection)
ModelState.AddModelError("", "Unable to save changes. Try again, and if the problem persists see your system administrator.");
}
return View(newsArticle);
}