I've overridden the default editor template (Object.ascx) to produce form (body) HTML that follows to Twitter Bootstrap's guidelines (http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/base-css.html#forms) which is executed via Html.EditorForModel().
@if (ViewData.TemplateInfo.TemplateDepth > 1)
{
@(Model == null ? ViewData.ModelMetadata.NullDisplayText : ViewData.ModelMetadata.SimpleDisplayText)
}
else
{
foreach (var property in ViewData.ModelMetadata.Properties.Where(m => m.ShowForEdit @*&& m.ModelType != typeof (System.Data.EntityState)*@ && !m.IsComplexType && !ViewData.TemplateInfo.Visited(m)))
{
if (property.HideSurroundingHtml)
{
@Html.Editor(property.PropertyName)
}
else
{
<div class="control-group @(!ViewData.ModelState.IsValidField(property.PropertyName) ? "error" : ViewData.ModelState.ContainsKey(property.PropertyName) ? "success" : "" )">
@if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Html.Label(property.PropertyName).ToHtmlString()))
{
@Html.Label(property.GetDisplayName() + (property.IsRequired ? " *" : ""), new { @class = "control-label" })
}
<div class="controls">
@Html.Editor(property.PropertyName)
@Html.ValidationMessage(property.PropertyName, "*", new { @class = "help-inline" })
</div>
</div>
}
}
}
This works well unless I want to tweak the form (e.g. change the ordering or add fieldsets). I basically want to separate part of the above code into another editor template, which resulted in Property.ascx. This will render a label, input and validation message for a given property, executed via Html.Editor("{PropertyName"}) or Html.EditorFor(m => m.{PropertyName}).
<div class="control-group @(!ViewData.ModelState.IsValidField(ViewData.ModelMetadata.PropertyName) ? "error" : ViewData.ModelState.ContainsKey(ViewData.ModelMetadata.PropertyName) ? "success" : "" )">
@if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Html.Label(ViewData.ModelMetadata.PropertyName).ToHtmlString()))
{
@Html.Label(ViewData.ModelMetadata.GetDisplayName() + (ViewData.ModelMetadata.IsRequired ? " *" : ""), new { @class = "control-label" })
}
<div class="controls">
@Html.Editor(ViewData.ModelMetadata.PropertyName)
@Html.ValidationMessage(ViewData.ModelMetadata.PropertyName, "*", new { @class = "help-inline" })
</div>
</div>
The problem with the above editor template is that it doesn't render the correct input for the given type. So a date/time property will just render a normal text box without the type attribute.
Am I going about this the right way? Should I be using a standard HTML helper or a partial view? If so, how do we handle the generic nature?