ASP.NET MVC2 - Model Binding multiple data sources on one View page - Options?

Question

I have one view page (MyView.aspx) and many data sources to bind on this page.

Lets say it has Books, Publishers, Comments, etc.

Each one of those has an object which provides a List, List, etc.

In my view, what are my optiosn for multilple model biding?

I want to check to see if each one is empty, and then enumerate it. But I can't check Model.Count() because wouldn't Model be made of all those objects if I set the page to inheriet from ?

What are my options? Should I load each content area in a control/partial view?

Or can I just dump each object into ViewData and then check the count by casting in the view?

Thanks so much for taking a look at my problem.

Rion Williams · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-23 16:30:30Z

6

Have you considered using a ViewModel that contains all Lists of all of your different data fields and using that to populate your View?

Example:

ViewModel:

public class MyViewModel
{
   List<Book> Books {get; set;}
   List<Publisher> Publishers {get; set;}
   List<Comment> Comments {get; set;}
   //Other fields...

   //Constructors...
}

Then in your View you could simply check if a specific field was null prior to enumerating through it:

View:

if(Model.Books.Count() != 0)
{
   //Enumerate through results here
}

edited Feb 23, 2011 at 16:30

answered Feb 23, 2011 at 16:21

Rion Williams

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3 Comments

NOCARRIER Over a year ago

Hey, that is a great idea. I keep forgetting about ViewModels. My team wants us to use concrete objects as much as possible (the Publisher object, etc). Would this be preffered to creating a partial view for each model?

Rion Williams Over a year ago

You should be able to implement it just like above - and just pass all of the object into a single view. However - if you are going to be just displaying a single type of data in a view, then just passing in a collection of the items might be your best bet.

NOCARRIER Over a year ago

Much appriciated. Thanks for your help!

Jarrod Nettles · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-23 16:38:41Z

0

Rionmonster's is probably the best solution - another is to use strongly typed partial views. You could load everything into the view data and then inject each segment into the respective partial view.

answered Feb 23, 2011 at 16:38

Jarrod Nettles

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2 Comments

NOCARRIER Over a year ago

I agree, create a model to hold each object's list of objects is a good method. I am considering strongly typed parial views, as it would allow me to bind directly to the concrete objects (Publisher, etc). Also, if I wanted to convert the content areas to load via AJAX, I would need parital views to do so... Does that sound correct?

Jarrod Nettles Over a year ago

Breaking them into partial views will definitely ease your Ajax life since you can just return the partial as your ajax response, thus only reloading the bits that you need.

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