Posts Tagged ‘ExtensionMethod’

TryUpdateModel and unknown model-types

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

TryUpdateModel does not work on types not known at compile time. For example when creating an object through the Activator.CreateInstance()

To remedy this use this snippet of code:

public static class ControllerHelpers
{
  public static bool TryUpdateGenericModel(this Controller controller, object model)
  {
    var param = new Type[] { model.GetType() };
    var controllerType = controller.GetType();
    var controllerMethods = controllerType.GetMethods(BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
    var TUMmethod = controllerMethods.First(x => x.Name.StartsWith("TryUpdateModel") && x.GetParameters().Count() == 1);
    var TUMgeneric = TUMmethod.MakeGenericMethod(param);
    var result = TUMgeneric.Invoke(controller, new object[] { model });
    return (bool)result;
  }
}

And in your controller when trying to update your model, use it like this:

var emptyModelObject = Activator.CreateInstance(modelType); // whichever way you get it doesn't really matter.
var result = this.TryUpdateGenericModel(modelObject);

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