ASP.NET 4 Unleashed

Accepting Form Input

Invariably, after seeing a little bit of what MVC is and how it works, developers immediately begin wondering how to invoke server-side events or how to manipulate data and accept input from users. First, you need to remember that in the MVC framework, there is no concept of server-side events. There are no server controls and no concept of postback and invoking server-side events.

So if you don’t have postbacks and server-side events, how do you provide interactivity for your users? To answer this, we have to dust off the corner of our brains that remembers what HTML actually is and unlearn the abstraction layer placed over HTTP by Web Forms.

To demonstrate both MVC’s simplicity and power, let’s create a simple form and ...