How to programmatically create textbox based on mvc view model object?

Question

Is there a way to programmatically create a textbox based on a view model object? Let me elaborate. Take for example, a standard ViewModel object like password.

public class PassWordViewModel
{
    [DataType(DataType.Password)]
    [MaxLength(10)]
    public string Password { get; set; }
}

Now take for example, a textbox control built programmatically:

TextBox textBox = new TextBox();
textBox.TextMode = TextBoxMode.Password;
textBox.MaxLength = 10;

How do I programmatically create a textbox which contains all of the properties that are set on my model object?

TextBox textBox = [CREATE TEXTBOX FROM MY PASSWORD 
VIEWMODEL OBJECT CONTAINING ALL THE DATA ANNOTATED 
PROPERTIES]

Answer 1

It's unusual to have to do this, but it's possible all the same.

You first need to create an instance of HtmlHelper<PasswordViewModel> in your controller:

var viewContext = new ViewContext(ControllerContext, new NullObjectView(), ViewData, TempData, TextWriter.Null);
var helper = new HtmlHelper<PassWordViewModel>(viewContext, new ViewPage());

As you can see, there is a NullObjectView class in there, which is as follows:

public class NullObjectView : IView
{
    public void Render(ViewContext viewContext, TextWriter writer)
    {

    }
}

Then create the textbox using System.Web.Mvc.Html.InputExtensions.TextBoxFor():

var textbox = InputExtensions.TextBoxFor(helper, x => x.Password);

This returns an MvcHtmlString, which will contain the full textbox output of:

<input data-val="true" data-val-maxlength="The field Password must be a string or array type with a maximum length of '10'." data-val-maxlength-max="10" id="Password" name="Password" value="" type="text">