MVC Html.TextArea overload issue

Question

I have a form in an MVC view which contains a number of text boxes, drop down lists and text areas. I am using the HTML helper to create these controls, including pre-populating them with View Data where appropriate, and applying styles via the htmlAttributes parameter.

This is working fine with TextBox controls and DropDownLists etc, however when I add the htmlAttributes to the TextArea it stops working, claiming that the best overloaded method has some invalid arguments, the code that is failing is:

Html.TextArea("Description", ViewData["Description_Current"], new { @class = "DataEntryStd_TextArea" })

The resulting error is:

'System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' does not contain a definition for 'TextArea' and the best extension method overload 'System.Web.Mvc.Html.TextAreaExtensions.TextArea(System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper, string, string, object)' has some invalid arguments

For comparison the TextBox calls that are working fine are:

Html.TextBox("TelephoneNumberAlternate", ViewData["TelephoneNumberAlternate"], new { @class = "DataEntryStd_TextBox" })

I tried explicitly referencing the TextAreaExtensions.TextArea and including the HtmlHelper argument however this made no difference.

For info the TextArea call works fine without the htmlAttributes parameter. Additionally I have tried specifying a name/value dictionary for the class attribute however this suffers the exact same problem.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Awesome work guys. Got to love the fact that the SO community are so fast that issues I can't solve alone don't particularly impact on my day! Thanks! :) — Timbo
– Timbo, Commented Jun 5, 2009 at 14:08

Tomas Aschan · Accepted Answer · 2009-06-05 14:04:20Z

It always bugs me that these error messages don't tell you which one of the arguments don't match.

Have you tried this?

Html.TextArea("Description", ViewData["Description_Current"].ToString(), new { @class = "DataEntryStd_TextArea" })

The reason I ask is that the ViewData["Description_Current"] is of type Object, and there is an overload with the signature Html.TextArea(String, Object) - although the object in this case represents the html attributes. That could be why the compiler doesn't complain until you add the html attributes as a third parameter - until then, the second parameter is allowed to be an Object, but as soon as you add the third parameter the second has to be a String.

tvanfosson · Accepted Answer · 2009-06-05 14:04:37Z

You need to cast the ViewData["Description_Current"] to string as the method requires the signature (string, string, object) not (string, object, object). The TextBox works because there is a signature using html attributes that takes (string, object, object).

<%= Html.TextArea( "Name", (string)ViewData["Value"], new { @class = "klass" } ) %>

Docs for HtmlHelper.TextBox and HtmlHelper.TextArea are available at MSDN.

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