Paul Brown

In MVC1, by default an empty textbox was sent as string.Empty to the controller on POST. In MVC2, it now sends the value as NULL. See ModelMetadata.ConvertEmptyStringToNull . I think there are some valid reasons for why they made the change – see Brad Wilson’s comment for more. If your system relies on string.Empty, you’ve got a problem. There are several options for handling this. The first is using the DisplayFormatAttribute on every property that needs it. Painful. Here’s an example: [DisplayFormat(ConvertEmptyStringToNull=false)] public string FirstName { get; set; } You can also write a custom binder that sets this value to false. Like so: public class CustomStringModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder { public override object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext) { var value = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue(bindingContext.ModelName); if (bindingContext.ModelType == typeof(string)) { ...

Asp.Net MVC2 introduced Areas as a feature part of the framework. Areas allow you to divide your application into logical units. It also makes your Url’s look more accurate. Thinking of a generic store they might have areas such as Inventory, Payroll, Employees and Sales. Here are example ActionLinks for each area. <%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home", new { area = "" }, new { })%> <%= Html.ActionLink("Payroll", "Index", "Main", new { area = "Payroll" }, new { })%> <%= Html.ActionLink("Inventory", "Index", "Main", new { area = "Inventory" }, new { })%> <%= Html.ActionLink("Employees", "Index", "Main", new { area = "Employees" }, new { })%> <%= Html.ActionLink("Sales", "Index", "Main", new { area = "Sales" }, new { })%> Notice that the area is pass...