MVC-3 and Dynamic - #Html.Label(View.X) not Rendering - dynamic

Question

Using MVC-3, Razor:
-- MyController --
public ActionResult Index(String message) // where message = "hello"
{
ViewModel.Test1 = "This is a test";
ViewModel.Test2 = "This is another test. " + message;
}
-- Index.cshtml --
#Html.Label((string)View.Test1)
<br />
#Html.Label((string)View.Test2)
Why will it only render out the following?
<label for="This is a test">This is a test</label>
<br />
It's been driving me absolutely crazy over the past few days and seems to make no sense. There has to be a reason for it.
I can debug this and step through thew view. In the view, I watch as this line is processed and the value of View.Test2 is "This is another test. hello".
I have cases where I am doing the following and it works fine.
(ex)
ViewModel.Something = this.readDataService.GetSomething();
What's the difference?
Thanks,
Rob

Answer 1

Looks like you are using a pre-RC2 version of ASP.NET MVC 3. ViewModel was changed to ViewBag in RC 2 (see the this post by Scott Guthrie).
With earlier previews of ASP.NET MVC 3 we exposed this API using a dynamic property called “ViewModel” on the Controller base class, and with a dynamic property called “View” within view templates. A lot of people found the fact that there were two different names confusing, and several also said that using the name ViewModel was confusing in this context – since often you create strongly-typed ViewModel classes in ASP.NET MVC, and they do not use this API.
With RC2 we are exposing a dynamic property that has the same name – ViewBag – within both Controllers and Views.
And it does look like you are trying to use ViewModel as the strongly typed model for your view. Instead, create a class to use as your model and then use #Html.LabelFor:
public class PersonModel
{
public string Name { get; set; }
}
in the controller:
PersonModel model = new PersonModel { Name = "John" };
return View(model);
in the view:
#Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name): #Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Name)
which renders:
<label for="Name">Name</label>: <input id="Name" name="Name" type="text" value="John" />
HTH