Model binding things other than textboxes could be tricky in ASP.NET MVC. To correctly model bind, one has to follow a specific naming/value conventions in the HTML.

Let’s say we have a model object called People, and we have a List of states people have lived in.

  public class People
  {
    public List<string> StatesLiveIn { get; set; }
  }

And in our View we have as follows:

@model TestBinder.Models.People
 
foreach (string state in new List<string>() { "NY","NJ","FL","IL","TX" })
{     
  @state <input  type="checkbox" value="@state" name="StatesLiveIn" /><br />      
}

Out controller simple looks like this:

    public ActionResult Index()
    {
      return View();
    }
 
    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult Index(People p)
    {
      return View(p);
    }

If we put a trace point at the return line, and inspect after the user has submitted only NY and TX…

…we’ll see that it was correctly bound…