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Next, let’s update the “Intensity” field to use radio buttons.
Follow Along
To follow along commiting your changes to this course, you'll need to fork the aspnet-fitness-frog repo. Then you can clone, commit, and push your changes to your fork like this:
git clone <your-fork>
cd aspnet-fitness-frog
git checkout tags/v3.3 -b using-radio-buttons
Additional Learning
See the following pages for more information about C# enums.
For more information on how to style forms using Bootstrap, see this page on the Bootstrap documentation website.
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Next, let's update the intensity
field to use radio buttons.
0:00
Why radio buttons?
0:04
To answer that question,
let's review our entry data model.
0:06
We can use this drop-down list to
navigate to the Intensity property.
0:10
The Intensity property is
of type IntensityLevel.
0:14
We can put our cursor on the data type and
press F12 to navigate to the definition.
0:18
IntensityLevel is defined as
an enum containing three values,
0:24
Low, Medium and High.
0:28
We could use a drop-down list for
this field.
0:31
But with only three possible values, I
think it makes sense to use radio buttons.
0:33
Radio buttons are like check boxes,
in that they are either on or off.
0:38
But unlike check boxes,
0:43
when they are put into groups only one
radio button can be selected at a time.
0:45
This sounds perfect for
the Intensity field.
0:50
Here's the markup that
we want to implement.
0:52
Notice that the input elements all
have the same name attribute value.
0:55
This is what groups these
radio buttons together, so
1:02
only one of them can
be selected at a time.
1:05
The value attribute is the value that
will be submitted to the server for
1:07
the selected item.
1:11
Let's open our Add View.
1:16
We can render this markup using
the radio button for HTML helper method.
1:18
Go ahead and
remove the call to the TextBoxFor method.
1:23
Add a div element.
1:31
Then make our first call to
the RadioButtonFor method.
1:34
The first parameter is
the lambda expression for
1:43
the model property that we're
rendering a radio button for.
1:46
The second parameter is the object
representing the radio button's value.
1:54
I'll start with using
the string literal Low.
1:59
Then, after the method call,
2:02
we can type the text that will display
to the right of the radio button.
2:04
Now we just need to repeat that twice
more, once each for Medium and High.
2:09
@Html.RadioButtonFor, m
2:14
goes to m.Intensity.
2:20
Then the value Medium, and
2:28
to the right of the method
call the text Medium.
2:31
@Html.RadioButtonFor, m goes to
2:36
m.Intensity, then the value High,
2:41
and then to the right High again.
2:47
Let's review our progress.
2:52
Press F5 to run our app.
2:53
Here are our radio buttons.
2:57
So far so good, but you can't click on
the label to select a radio button.
3:00
You have to click on
the radio button itself.
3:06
We'll work on fixing that in a bit.
3:09
Switching back to our view, I'm not happy
with the string literals that we used for
3:12
Low, Medium and High.
3:16
Remember our IntensityLevel enum?
3:18
Let's see how we can use
enums instead of strings.
3:20
First, we need to add the namespace for
3:23
our data models by adding a using
directive right below the model directive.
3:26
@using Treehouse.FitnessFrog.Models.
3:30
If we didn't define our namespace
we'd need to use the fully qualified
3:39
namespace for
our IntensityLevel enum, which is
3:44
Treehouse.FitnessFrogModels.Entry.Intensi-
tyLevel.
3:48
I'd much rather type Entry.IntensityLevel.
3:52
Now we can replace our strings with
the corresponding enum values.
3:56
Entry.IntensityLevel.Low
4:11
Then to the right,
@Entry.IntensityLevel.Low.
4:20
Then for Medium,
Entry.IntensityLevel.Medium,
4:31
and to the right again,
4:38
@Entry.IntensityLevel.Medium.
4:41
And for High, Entry.IntensityLevel.High,
4:54
and again to the right,
@Entry.IntensityLevel.High.
5:00
Save the view and refresh the page.
5:07
Great, looks the same as it did before.
5:11
By switching to the enum values we've
reduced the chance for errors, and
5:14
made it easier to maintain our app.
5:18
Before we wrap up this video, let's fix
our radio button labels by reviewing
5:20
the Bootstrap documentation
at getbootstrap.com.
5:25
Click on CSS at the top, and
then on Forms here on the right.
5:30
Then scroll down until you see
the radio button examples.
5:37
Here's the Checkboxes and
radio buttons section.
5:44
And a bit further down is
an example of inline radio buttons.
5:49
Looks like we just need to surround
each of the radio buttons with a label
5:54
containing the CSS class radio-inline.
5:59
Label class= radio-inline,
6:09
Then cut and paste our call to the
RadioButtonFor method inside of the label.
6:16
Label class= radio-inline.
6:28
Again, cut and paste the RadioButtonFor
method call inside of the label.
6:35
And one more time.
6:48
label class= radio-inline,
and then cut and
6:50
paste the call to
the RadioButtonFor method.
6:55
Save the view and refresh the page.
7:07
The layout is improved, and
7:13
we can now click on a label
to select that radio button.
7:14
Having a larger click target will
help users select the correct value.
7:19
Go ahead and stop the app.
7:24
If you're using GitHub,
let's commit our changes.
7:27
Enter a commit message of
Updated the Intensity field
7:33
to use radio buttons, and
click the Commit All button.
7:38
Next up, we'll update the exclude
field to use a check box.
7:46
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