Create a List-type view dynamically from a Json object in MVC3

Question

I have a controller that access a WCF service which returns a Json object (collection). All rows are of same type, but at different calls the row stricture is different (the return object comes from a user-built sql query, executed with executeReader and serialized as Json So I don't know the row structure upfront.

What I need is an easy way to pass this Json string to something which will generate a view of type list on the fly for it. Doesn't matter formatting, etc, just should be output easily as a table.

Does anyone knows how can I accomplish this?

Another option might be to have something that generate the view on the fly for a IEnumerable of anonymous objects (since using this I could convert the json to a list of anonymous)

EDIT

I found something that does pretty much what I need, except it display metadata about passed object.

It is preetyPrint.js, and I integrated it in my page as below: In my controller I set the result json object to ViewBag.Result, and in the view I used this code:

    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/prettyprint.js")" type="text/javascript">    </script>
    <div id="resultGrid"></div>
    <script>
    var resultObject = @Html.Raw(ViewBag.Result);            
    var ppTable = prettyPrint(resultObject);
    document.getElementById('resultGrid').appendChild(ppTable);         
    </script>

Does anyone knows such script that actually "dump" the data instead of metadata? Thanks.

Paul Tyng · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-16 15:34:01Z

1

You should create a class to deserialize to if you know the properties of the row. Then use the JavaScriptSerializer class to deserialize to a list of your new class you created. Then you can take a look at the WebGrid class to output the HTML, or just manually iterate over the property metadata in your view.

Creating a custom class will provide you the ability to use metadata to control formatting or other display attributes of the output.

If you cannot create a custom class, you can always use Json.NET or the JavaScriptSerializer to deserialize to a list of dictionary objects or ExpandoObject / Dynamic's or something. Then you would have to manually write something to iterate the keys I think. The ModelMetadataProvider in MVC may be able to handle these allowing you to just iterate the properties in your view code.

edited Nov 16, 2011 at 15:34

answered Nov 16, 2011 at 15:27

Paul Tyng

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