Dynamically Load Form in MVC Razor View Engine

One part of my project gives user the ability to create forms and render it dynamically. Here's how I render the  form definition from an XML container in Razor view engine.

The View

@model MyProject.Models.DynaForm
@using (Html.BeginForm("ViewForm","FormManagement", FormMethod.Post))  
{
   var sectionCollection = from s in Model.XmlForm.Descendants("section") select s;
   foreach(System.Xml.Linq.XElement section in sectionCollection) // get sections
   {
   var fieldCollection = from f in section.Descendants("field") select f; // get fields
   <fieldset>
     <legend>Section @(section.Attribute("id").Value)</legend>
     @foreach (System.Xml.Linq.XElement field in fieldCollection) // iterate over each field
        {
        <div>
          <div>@field.Attribute("name").Value</div>
         <div>@Html.TextBox(field.Attribute("name").Value, field.Value, new { @class = field.Attribute("inputtype").Value }) </div>
        </div>
        }
    </fieldset>
    }
  <input type="submit" name="submit" value="save" />
  <input type="submit" name="submit" value="cancel" />
}

The Controller

public class ViewFormController : Controller
{
    Models.DynaForm oWorkflow = new Models.DynaForm();
    public ActionResult ViewForm()
    {
        oDynaform.ID = 1;
        oDynaform.XmlForm = XDocument.Load(Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/myform.xml"));                 return View("ExecuteRequest", oWorkflow); // pass this to view for rendering
    }
 
    [HttpPost] // POST handler
    public ActionResult ViewForm(string submit)
    {
        switch (submit)
        {
            case "save":
                // delegate sending to another controller action
                return (Save());
            case "cancel":
                // call another action to perform the cancellation
                return (CancelRequest());
            default:
                // If they've submitted the form without a submitButton, 
                // just return the view again.
                return (View());
        }
    }
 
    private ActionResult CancelRequest()
    {
        return (PartialView()); // return to same page
    }
 
    private ActionResult Save()
    {
        oDynaForm.ID = 2;
        return (PartialView("ViewForm", oDynaForm));    }
}

The XML field template.

<dynamicform name="yourform" id="1">
  <section id="1">
    <field type="text" name="First name" inputtype="textbox" />
    <field type="text" name="Last name" inputtype="textbox" />
    <field type="text" name="Email" inputtype="textbox" />
  </section>
  <section id="2">
    <field type="text" name="Other information" inputtype="textarea" >  Other info here </field>
  </section>
  <section id="3">
    <field type="text" name="Input 1" inputtype="textarea" />
    <field type="text" name="Input 2" inputtype="textarea" />
    <field type="text" name="Input 3" inputtype="textarea" />
  </section>
</dynamicform>

MVC and Entity Framework's Code First

I have a new web application project and decided to use MVC 4 and Entity Framework's Code First. I'll post here the problems encountered and how I fixed it.

MVC has option for automatic scaffolding when creating the CRUD functionality, but when I tried to execute it, I got the following error.

Invalid value for key 'attachdbfilename'.

I've searched the net for an hour and never found the solution. Though my connection string is working correctly, I decided to take a second look at the web.config and seen this peculiar line of setting. So I commented the LocalDBConnectionFactory and replaced with System.Data.Entity.Sql.ConnectionFactory instead so it will use the connection string on parameter. It fixed my problem.

<entityframework>
    <defaultconnectionfactory type="System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.SqlConnectionFactory, EntityFramework">
    <!--<defaultconnectionfactory type="System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.LocalDbConnectionFactory, EntityFramework" >-->
      <parameters>
        <parameter value="Data Source=USER-PC\SQLServer;Initial Catalog=MyDB;Integrated Security=True"></parameter>
      </parameters>
    </defaultconnectionfactory>
</entityframework>

Entity Framework has this inherent problem whenever it needs to check Model changes, and it won't drop/create the target table, when you want to save. The following error, where 'dbContext' is your defined DB Context.