ASP.NET MVC includes a number of built-in display and editor templates. For instance, when rendering a display or editing template for a Boolean value ASP.NET MVC will render either a disabled or enabled checkbox. When rendering a display template for an email address, ASP.NET MVC will render an actual mailto: anchor tag so that the email address is clickable. The editor template for a password property renders an <input type=”password” /> textbox so that the user’s input is masked. Additionally, you can create your own custom display and editor templates.
The Html.DisplayFor and Html.EditorFor methods, when called, need to determine which template to render for the given property. To make this determination these methods examine the specified property’s metadata, which includes information like the property’s data type (bool, string, int, etc.) along with attributes decorating the model properties. For instance, in your model you can decorate a property with a DataType attribute to inform the view and the templating system the type of data this property expresses. In the following model, the property Password is decorated as a password data type, while the Bio property is decorated as a multiline text input (which will render a multiline textbox for this property’s editor template).
public class MyModel
{
...
[DataType(DataType.Password)]
public string Password { get; set; }
[DataType(DataType.MultilineText)]
public string Bio { get; set; }
...
}
Specifically, the Html.DisplayFor and Html.EditorFor methods consult the following metadata in this order:
- The UIHint attribute – specifies the name of the template to use.
- The DataType attribute
- The data type
Creating a custom template in ASP.NET MVC is a breeze. Simply add DisplayTemplates and EditorTemplates subfolders to the Views\Shared folder. Then add a view file (e.g., .cshtml) to the subfolder with the name of the template. You can override the default templates by naming the template with the same name as the data type to override – such as String.cshtml or DateTime.cshtml – or you can give it a unique name – such as YesNo.cshtml – in which case you specify the template to use via the UIHint attribute. The custom template is a view that defines the incoming model via the @model directive and emits the desired output.