ASP.NET MVC Checkbox has a hidden input too

I noticed strange behaviour whilst coding and ASP.NET MVC CheckBox Html Helper. I noticed that the field which was in part of a GET form was creating the query string with the same field in it twice. When the box was checked one parameter was true and the other was false.

Say I have a boolean field, MyField, that I am creating a checkbox for. I would write this: @Html.CheckBox("MyField"). You would expect this to output a single check box but if you actually look at the HTML that is generated you will notice that is also creates a hidden field.

I found out the the reason for this is written within the ASP.NET MVC source code:

if (inputType == InputType.CheckBox) {
    // Render an additional  for checkboxes. This
    // addresses scenarios where unchecked checkboxes are not sent in the request.
    // Sending a hidden input makes it possible to know that the checkbox was present
    // on the page when the request was submitted.
    StringBuilder inputItemBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    inputItemBuilder.Append(tagBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing));

    TagBuilder hiddenInput = new TagBuilder("input");
    hiddenInput.MergeAttribute("type", HtmlHelper.GetInputTypeString(InputType.Hidden));
    hiddenInput.MergeAttribute("name", name);
    hiddenInput.MergeAttribute("value", "false");
    inputItemBuilder.Append(hiddenInput.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing));
    return inputItemBuilder.ToString();
}

I appreciate the reasoning behind this but in my scenario MyField is part of a ViewModel that is being sent with the form and of course boolean values are False by default so this is wasted on my scenario.

Another reason I do not like this is because I am using the GET method on my form the user will see this oddity in the querystring. Worse still, they be a developer and judge my code as rubbish not knowing it is the doing of ASP.NET MVC. I can't have that! ;)

Solution

Simple solution really. Write the HTML you want in HTML, forget about the HtmlHelper:

<input type="checkbox" name="MyField" value="true" id="MyField"
@Html.Raw((Model.MyField) ? "checked=\"checked\"" : "") />

Remember the value="true" because the default value to be sent is "on" if it is checked, which obviously can't be parsed to a Boolean.

Obviously, this doesn't look that clean but I will continue to do this on forms that use the GET method.