MVC :: Return Value Chosen For Html.checkboxfor?

I love MVC, coming from WebForms development, but there are things that don't make any sense to me. The "Error executing child handler" occurs anytime a vast number of things happen, for instance. It's very close to a useless message. In order to get the actual cause, I click on Debug/Exceptions and check the "Common Language Runtime Exceptions", and then reload the View. Presto! It shows the cause of the error.

Another thing I'm wondering about today is the FormCollection value of the Html.CheckBoxFor control. Checkboxes in general seem badly designed in html, and MVC didn't improve on it much. When processing a POST, if a regular checkbox isn't checked, it simply won't show up in the list of posted elements. Great. Instead of just grabbing it by name in the FormCollection and testing its value, instead I have to test whether or not it exists in the FormCollection. Not very intuitive. The Html.CheckBoxFor is a variant on the same theme. It always shows up in the FormCollection, but with a similarly non-intuitive return. If it's not checked, it yields a value of 'false', which can simply be converted to boolean and processed as normal. But if it is checked, it returns 'true,false'. Super. Now, instead of converting its value to a boolean directly, I have to test the string returned for the index of 'true' and return that instead.

I find this close to as aggravating as the Linq To Sql Sum() method bug. If I run a Select() method on a given numeric property and run Sum() to add them all together, if an empty result set is returned by the query it throws an exception. Now, if I was looking at a bunch of totals to add together, and none of them had anything entered, what would I write in the sum box? Error? Exception? Nope, it would be zero. I fully understand that if no results were returned then nulls cannot be added, but according to the intitial documentation this method was supposed to return zero in such an instance regardless, because that's just common sense. Enough of that rant. Does anyone know why this return value was chosen for Html.CheckBoxFor?