Once upon a day I created a viewmodel class:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public List<KeyValuePair<string, int>> MyList { get; set; }
}

I wanted to use it as a parameter in my MVC action method. The wonderful model binding feature of MVC allows me to do that and it seemed to be working without error.
I got the exact number of key value pairs in my list property but the Key and Value props were always null and 0. I repeat: without any error!

After checking DefaultModelBinder’s source I realized that it will never work: KeyValuePair<,> is a struct, so assigning to variable means a copy and it’s members are readonly so can be set only during construction. The logic in DefaultModelBinder is different: it creates the model objects, handles them over via variable assignations, evaluates their member values and then assigns those values to members. There is a workaround implemented inside related to Dictionary<,>, but it’s logic isn’t reusable for my situation because the programmer didn’t intended to allow that (private methods) and the logic there is a bit smells for me.

There are solutions on the net, but those I found suffer from one common problem: they evaluate Key and Value on their onnw, which skips some goods of model binding, e.g. validation and model state propagation. Not too good.

Here comes my solution. 🙂

First I created a new default model binder which in case of KeyValuePair<,> model type calls my BindModelViaKeyValuePairSubstitute from BindModel method but leaves all other things handled by original implementation.

public class KeyValuePairCapableDefaultModelBinder:DefaultModelBinder
{
    public override object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
    {
       object ret = null;

       if (TypeHelper.IsSubclassOf(bindingContext.ModelType, typeof(KeyValuePair<,>)))
       {
           ret = BindModelViaKeyValuePairSubstitute(controllerContext, bindingContext);
       }
       else
       {
           ret = base.BindModel(controllerContext, bindingContext);
       }

       return ret;
    }
}

I created a substitute class which overcomes the limitations: not a struct and has writable members.
To make the trick transparent to model binding the substitute class must contain members of same name and type as the KeyValuePair<,> we want to handle.

        /// <summary>
        /// KeyValuePair substitute.
        /// </summary>
        private class KeyValuePairSubstitute<TKey, TValue> : KeyValuePairSubstituteBase
        {
            public TKey Key { get { return (TKey)KeyAsObject; } set { KeyAsObject = value; } }
            public TValue Value { get { return (TValue)ValueAsObject; } set { ValueAsObject = value; } }

            public KeyValuePairSubstitute()
            {
                // set values to defaults to avoid NullReferenceExceptions when trying to get
                // an uninitialized null value from a generic type which cannot stand that (e.g. int).
                this.Key = default(TKey);
                this.Value = default(TValue);
            }
        }
        
        /// <summary>
        /// Base class for KeyValuePair substitute to allow access to generic values in handy way.
        /// </summary>
        private class KeyValuePairSubstituteBase
        {
            public object KeyAsObject { get; set; }
            public object ValueAsObject { get; set; }
        }

Now my BindModelViaKeyValuePairSubstitute is trivial.
The logic here is to let DefaultModelBinder bind our substitute object instead of a KeyValuePair<,> and then instantiate a KeyValuePair<,> from that object’s content.

        /// <summary>
        /// Default BindModel call doesnt handle KeyValuePair well, because it is a struct and has readonly props.
        /// It will return an instance with default values without any error!
        /// </summary>
        private object BindModelViaKeyValuePairSubstitute(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
        {
            object ret = null;

            var keyValuePairSubstituteGeneric = typeof(KeyValuePairSubstitute<,>).MakeGenericType(bindingContext.ModelType.GetGenericArguments());

            var kvpBindingContext = new ModelBindingContext()
            {
                ModelMetadata = ModelMetadataProviders.Current.GetMetadataForType(null, keyValuePairSubstituteGeneric),
                ModelName = bindingContext.ModelName,
                ModelState = bindingContext.ModelState,
                ValueProvider = bindingContext.ValueProvider
            };

            var keyValuePairSubstitute = (KeyValuePairSubstituteBase)base.BindModel(controllerContext, kvpBindingContext);

            ret = Activator.CreateInstance(bindingContext.ModelType, keyValuePairSubstitute.KeyAsObject, keyValuePairSubstitute.ValueAsObject);
            return ret;
        }

The last step: the new model binder should be registered in Application_Start as usual:

            ModelBinders.Binders.DefaultBinder = new CustomModelBinder();

That’s all. You have bindable and validable KeyValuePair<,>s now!