System.NullReferenceException in the EditUser View...

philthy · July 26th, 2009, 07:15 AM

I have a strange problem in the ManageUser/EditUser part of the site.
I'm building the site from scratch, using a different layout, but so far, the Controller and Model code is identical with the original site. The code in the EditUser and ManageUser Views is 100% identical.

When I press the "Edit user" link on the ManageUser View, I get the
"System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error in the EditUser View.

I ran the debugger, and I can see that, when I press the ""Edit user" link on the ManageUser View, the EditUser Action is called, but the "id" parameter is empty, which means the MembershipUser object will be null. So, the Model which is passed to the EditUser View is null, and the Veiw can't write any values from the Model, hence the NullReferenceException.

When I hover the mouse over the EditUser link, I can see the correct path, with the correct querystring parameter, in the status line in the lower left corner of the browser:

http://localhost:port#/User/EditUser?id=Admin

In the EditUser Action, if I hardcode the id parameter to ex. "Admin", like this:

Code:

[Authorize(Roles = "Admin")]
        public ActionResult EditUser(string id)
        {
            id = "Admin";
            ViewData["roles"] = (String[])Roles.GetAllRoles();
            MembershipUser membershipUser = Membership.GetUser(id);

            ViewData["PageTitle"] = "Edit " + id;
            return View(membershipUser);
        }

- it works, and the EditUser View is displayed correctly.

So, it seems like the querystring parameter isn't passed to the EditUser Action.
I'm running the site using Cassini, but the original site runs perfectly on Cassini, so this shouldn't be the reason...

Any thoughts?

Al_Katawazi · July 26th, 2009, 07:29 AM

Alright it definately seems like the param is not getting in. Send us exactly what the HTML looks like in your view that creates that link. It's probably a miss spelling somewhre between the view and the controller

philthy · July 26th, 2009, 08:07 AM

This is the entire ManageUser View. As you can see, the only difference between this and the original is that, because I use a different layout, I have a few more Content areas.

HTML Code:

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<System.Web.Security.MembershipUserCollection>" %>

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server">

</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="Content" runat="server">

    <% Html.RenderPartial("~/Views/Shared/Message.ascx"); %>
    <form method="post" action="ManageUser" class="manage-user">
    <p>
        <b>Total Registered Users: </b>
        <%= ViewData["RegisteredUsers"]%></p>
    <p>
        <b>Users Online Now: </b>
        <%= ViewData["UsersOnlineNow"] %></p>
    <hr />
    <!-- user search options -->
    <p>
        Search Members:
        <%= Html.TextBox("searchInput",ViewData["searchInput"])%>&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <%= Html.DropDownList("searchType", (SelectList)ViewData["searchOptionList"])%>&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <button type="submit" id="user-manageUser-button" style="height: 28px">
            Search</button></p>
    <hr />
    <!-- the user grid -->
    <table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="left" summary="User Grid" border="1">
        <thead>
            <tr style="font-weight: bold; background-color: #A8C3CB;">
                <th align="center">
                    Username
                </th>
                <th align="center">
                    E-Mail
                </th>
                <th align="center">
                    Created
                </th>
                <th align="center">
                    Last Used
                </th>
                <th align="center">
                    Approved
                </th>
                <th>
                    &nbsp;
                </th>
                <th>
                    &nbsp;
                </th>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <% foreach(MembershipUser membershipUser in Model) { %>
            <tr id="user-<%= membershipUser.UserName %>">
                <td>
                    <%= Html.Encode(membershipUser.UserName) %>
                </td>
                <td>
                    <%= Html.Encode(membershipUser.Email) %>
                </td>
                <td align="center">
                    <%= membershipUser.CreationDate.ToLocalTime() %>
                </td>
                <td align="center">
                    <%= membershipUser.LastActivityDate.ToLocalTime() %>
                </td>
                <td align="center">
                    <%= Html.CheckBox("approved" ,membershipUser.IsApproved, new {disabled="true"}) %>
                </td>
                <td>
                    <a href="EditUser?id=<%= membershipUser.UserName %>">
                        <img border="0" alt="Edit User" src="/Content/images/EditSymbol.png" title="Modify User"
                            align="middle" /></a>
                </td>
                <td align="center">
                    <a class="delete-user-button" href="#" meta:id="<%= membershipUser.UserName %>">
                        <img border="0" alt="Delete User" src="/Content/images/DeleteSymbol.png" title="Delete User"
                            align="middle" /></a>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <% } %>
        </tbody>
    </table>
    </form>
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content3" ContentPlaceHolderID="Secondary" runat="server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="ScriptContent" ContentPlaceHolderID="ScriptContent" runat="server">

    <script type="text/javascript" src="/Content/scripts/manage-users.js"></script>

</asp:Content>

This is the code in the EditUser View:

HTML Code:

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<System.Web.Security.MembershipUser>" %>

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="Content" runat="server">
    <% Html.RenderPartial("~/Views/Shared/Message.ascx"); %>
    <form method="post" action="EditUser" class="manage-user">
    <!-- The hidden control manages the username -->
    <%= Html.Hidden("id") %>
    
    <p>
        <b>UserName:</b><%= Html.Encode(Model.UserName) %>
    </p>
    <p>
        <b>E-Mail:</b>
        <%= Html.Encode(Model.Email) %></p>
    <p>
        <b>Registered:</b>
        <%= Model.CreationDate.ToLocalTime()%></p>
    <p>
        <b>Last Login:</b>
        <%= Model.LastLoginDate.ToLocalTime()%></p>
    <p>
        <b>Last Activity:</b>
        <%= Model.LastActivityDate.ToLocalTime()%></p>
    <p>
        <b>Online Now:</b>
        <%= Html.CheckBox("onlineNow", Model.IsOnline, new { disabled = "true" })%></p>
    <p>
        <b>Approved:</b>
        <%= Html.CheckBox("approved", Model.IsApproved)%></p>
    <p>
        <b>Locked Out:</b>
        <%= Html.CheckBox("lockedOut", Model.IsLockedOut, new { disabled = "true" })%></p>
    <hr />
    <!-- This portion allows you to actually edit the roles of the user -->
    <h2>
        Edit User Roles</h2>
    <ul>
        <% foreach (string role in (string[])ViewData["roles"])
           { %>
        <li>
            <%= Html.CheckBox("role." + role,  Roles.IsUserInRole(Model.UserName, role))%>
            <label for="role.<%= role %>">
                <%= Html.Encode(role) %></label></li>
        <% } %>
    </ul>
    <p>
        <button type="submit" id="user-editUser-button">
            Update User</button>
        <button type="button" onclick="location.href='/User/ManageUser'" style="margin-left: 2em;">
            Return</button>
    </p>
    </form>
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content3" ContentPlaceHolderID="Secondary" runat="server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="ScriptContent" ContentPlaceHolderID="ScriptContent" runat="server">
</asp:Content>

This is how the links are generated (View source):

HTML Code:

<td>
  <a href="EditUser?id=user">
     <img border="0" alt="Edit User" src="/Content/images/EditSymbol.png" title="Modify User"
     align="middle" /></a>
</td>

Al_Katawazi · July 26th, 2009, 09:21 AM

Try changing the ?id= to / in the link and see if that works for you. Otherwise if that doesn't work send the first couple of lines of the controller code that you are using.

philthy · July 26th, 2009, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al_Katawazi

Try changing the ?id= to / in the link and see if that works for you. Otherwise if that doesn't work send the first couple of lines of the controller code that you are using.

Yup, changing the ?id= to / in the link works...

Now that I think of it, isn't this the way it is supposed to look in MVC, since the route in Global.asax looks like this:
{controller}/{action}/{id}

Strange that it works in the original project, without this change...

Anyway, thanks for your help

Al_Katawazi · July 26th, 2009, 03:22 PM

You are quite right that the slash is the way to go when building the url. I have heard that google disregards anything after a ? in terms of SEO but you never know with google.

Rob Connery did a great piece on setting up routing located here. Sometimes though it is just simpler to slap in url variables. Personal preference.

zondre · July 27th, 2009, 01:19 PM

I had this issue when I first started rebuilding the project, because I included the default home (index and about) pages that are created in visual studio. So the route that was being passed in was the default route and not the admin/user/edit (may not be exact) route. I noticed the issue came up with some other routes that needed a page number or id. So, I moved the default route to the end of the routing system in global.asax file and removed the default id="" and everything works correctly. I wonder if you might be experiencing something similar.