html.textareafor - parse into an array of strings

Question

I am in C# MVC (.NET) and have a form where I have input with @html.TextAreaFor stored as a string I am assuming that the data from this text box will store as a string, but what I am wondering is how will the string look, in terms of "/n" elements, will the string delimit new line markers?

Ideally, I need to parse the textbox line-by-line, where the string on each line becomes an element of a List For example, if we have in the textbox

  item1
  item2
  item3

Then when I submit the form, the model that I specified will be loaded with the string form the textbox, and using that string we will load up our List (somewhere else, in a different model..)with item1, item2, and item3.

Use List<string> list = new List<string>(); string[] lines = textareamodel.Split(new string[] {Environment.NewLine}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries), then use foreach (string line in lines) { list.Add(line); }. I can write as answer if this trick works. — Tetsuya Yamamoto
– Tetsuya Yamamoto, Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 7:21
It could be done in a single line List<string> list = textareamodel.Split(new string[] {Environment.NewLine}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).ToList() . — mmushtaq
– mmushtaq, Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 7:33
@mmushtaq I agree with you by using ToList() as List<string>, but let's see if OP solves his problem first. — Tetsuya Yamamoto
– Tetsuya Yamamoto, Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 7:35

Tetsuya Yamamoto · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-05 08:25:58Z

5

Suppose you have TextAreaFor bound to a model property named TextAreaModel which contains strings from user input like this:

@model ViewModel

@Html.TextAreaFor(m => m.TextAreaModel, new { ... })

The proper way to extract lines from model property is splitting the string content using Environment.NewLine as delimiter in POST action method as shown in example below:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult SubmitForm(ViewModel model)
{
    // other stuff   

    // parse every textarea lines as list elements
    List<string> list = model.TextAreaModel.Split(new string[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).ToList();

    // assign it to other list property on other model
    OtherModel.OtherList = list;

    // other stuff

    return View(model);
}

NB: StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries will remove empty lines found in source string, which I think this is more recommended way than using StringSplitOptions.None.

Demos:

.NET Fiddle Example - Splitting By Newline

.NET Fiddle Example - MVC Implementation

Related issue:

How to parse user input from a textarea line by line

answered Jul 5, 2017 at 8:25

Tetsuya Yamamoto

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1 Comment

Joey Morgan Over a year ago

I had to make sure I was storing the property as a string and not a string[] or the Split method is not applicable. Once I changed that it worked perfectly.

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