Very simple question: in a strict MVC design pattern we want to keep Model, View and Controller can the View layer know which custom data classes are defined in the model?
As example:
I got a CarViewController in the view layer and a Car object in the model layer. Whenever the model layer changes the controller object that "sits" between the model and the view notifies the CarViewController and in my current implementation passes a copy of the updated car data as an instance of the Car class. Is this correct?
My gut instinct would have said no because I would not want the view layer to know the details of the model objects. It is not strict decoupling. However if I pass specific values instead of passing the custom data model I would need to stick to standard/primitive values (E.g. int as number of wheels) and it may require more coding.
Have I understood MVC correctly? Is there any reason why the view should not know the custom classes of the model layer?
If I am understanding your question correctly, I would say that your view needs to know the details of your Car object in most of the cases. You can utilize metadata in this way like this:
Model:
public class Car
{
[Display(Name = "Number of wheels")]
public int Wheels { get; set; }
}
View:
#model Namespace.Models.Car
#* This will display whatever your [Display(Name="Value")] decorator defines
as a display name, also the editor will respect the data type decorator. *#
#Html.LabelFor(m => m.Wheels)
#Html.EditorFor(m => m.Wheels)
In this case if you basically pass down a primitive then all metadata for your model is lost.
Related
From what I've read, I'm supposed to be using ViewModels to populate my views in MVC, rather than the model directly. This should allow me to pass not just the contents of the model, but also other information such as login state, etc. to the view instead of using ViewBag or ViewData. I've followed the tutorials and I've had both a model and a viewmodel successfully sent to the view. The original problem I had was that I needed a paginated view, which is simple to do when passing a model alone, but becomes difficult when passing a viewmodel.
With a model of
public class Instructor {
public string forename { get; set; }
public string surname { get; set; }
}
and a viewmodel of
public class InstructorVM {
public Instructor Instructors { get; set; }
public string LoggedIn { get; set; }
}
I can create a paginated list of the instructors using the pure model Instructor but I can't pass InstructorVM to the view and paginate it as there are other properties that aren't required in the pagination LoggedIn cause issues. If I pass InstructorVM.Instructors to the view, I get the pagination, but don't get the LoggedIn and as this is just the model, I may has well have passed that through directly.
An alternative that was suggested was to convert/expand the viewmodel into a list or somesuch which would produce an object like this that gets passed to the view
instructor.forename = "dave", instructor.surname = "smith", LoggedIn="Hello brian"
instructor.forename = "alan", instructor.surname = "jones", LoggedIn="Hello brian"
instructor.forename = "paul", instructor.surname = "barns", LoggedIn="Hello brian"
where the LoggedIn value is repeated in every row and then retrieved in the row using Model[0].LoggedIn
Obviously, this problem is caused because you can only pass one object back from a method, either Instructor, InstructorVM, List<InstructorVM>, etc.
I'm trying to find out the best option to give me pagination (on part of the returned object) from a viewmodel while not replicating everything else in the viewmodel.
One suggestion was to use a JavaScript framework like React/Angular to break up the page into a more MVVM way of doing things, the problem with that being that despite looking for suggestions and reading 1001 "Best JS framework" lists via Google, they all assume I have already learned all of the frameworks and can thus pick the most suitable one from the options available.
When all I want to do is show a string and a paginated list from a viewmodel on a view. At this point I don't care how, I don't care if I have to learn a JS framework or if I can do it just using MVC core, but can someone tell me how to do this thing I could do quite simply in ASP.NET? If it's "use a JS framework" which one?
Thanks
I'm not exactly sure what the difficulty is here, as pagination and using a view model aren't factors that play on one another. Pagination is all about selecting a subset of items from a data store, which happens entirely in your initial query. For example, whereas you might originally have done something like:
var widgets = db.Widgets.ToList();
Instead you would do something like:
var widgets = db.Widgets.Skip((pageNumber - 1) * itemsPerPage).Take(itemsPerPage).ToList();
Using a view model is just a layer on top of this, where you then just map the queried data, no matter what it is onto instances of your view model:
var widgetViewModels = widgets.Select(w => new WidgetViewModel
{
...
});
If you're using a library like PagedList or similar, this behavior may not be immediately obvious, since the default implementation depends on having access to the queryset (in order to do the skip/take logic for you). However, PagedList, for example has StaticPagedList which allows you to create an IPagedList instance with an existing dataset:
var pagedWidgets = new StaticPagedList<WidgetViewModel>(widgetViewModels, pageNumber, itemsPerPage, totalItems);
There, the only part you'd be missing is totalItems, which is going to require an additional count query on the unfiltered queryset.
If you're using a different library, there should be some sort of similar functionality available. You'll just need to confer with the documentation.
I went through a lot of readings about MVC and what each of these does is more or less clear. What I haven't understood yet is how they relate. I mean, I know about these relationships
but how are they implemented? What happens in an MVC framework?
I also have a few questions:
I read that a view can't be coupled with the controller, in other words it can't have a controller object inside, but then how does it use the proper controller if a view is supposed to trigger something in it?
How can the model update the view if its unique job is to represent data?
Is the business logic inside the controller or the model? I have read conflicting points of view
The most basic explination of MVC would be that you have each of the 3 layers.
Model
This contains your data. i.e database or set of classes.
View
This displays data to the user i.e your HTML page.
Contains controls for user interaction.
Controller
All access to data should go through this layer. i.e load data from your data source(model) and save data to your data source.
Carries out any data manipulation before saving or loading.
This create a separation of concerns theoretically allowing you to change anything in either layer without the other layer knowing or caring making for far more maintainable and readable code.
In practice this can become more complicated depending on how you wish to access data and display it although the basic principles still apply, occasionally meaning that each part of MVC pattern could be made up of smaller parts.
In terms of implementing it a good example would be ASP.Net MVC http://www.asp.net/mvc. the following could be a simple implementation of displaying some data via MVC using C#.
Model (C# class)
public class Person{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
}
Controller
public ActionResult Index(){
return View(new Person() { FirstName = "Person", LastName = "1" });
}
View (Index.cshtml)
#model Person
Full name: #Html.Raw(Model.FirstName + " " + Model.LastName)
This would output onto the web page
Full name : Person 1
Please forgive me for any syntax errors, not tested.
More detailed post: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/design_pattern/mvc_pattern.htm
When using Razor to render a form for a complex Model that has sub-models, we'd usually use Partial Views to render the sub-models.
Simple example Model:
public class BlogPost
{
public string Content { get; set; }
public List<Comment> Comments { get; set; }
}
public class Comment
{
public string Content { get; set; }
}
BlogPost.cshtml:
#model BlogPost
#Html.TextAreaFor(x => x.Content)
#for (int i = 0; i < Model.Comments.Count; i++)
{
#Html.Partial('Comment', Model.Comments[i])
}
Comment.cshtml:
#model Comment
#Html.TextAreaFor(x => x.Content)
Now for the issue:
Say we want to send the values of all fields to a controller action that takes BlogPost as a parameter. The fields are going to be posted back to the controller like so:
Content=The+content+of+the+BlogPost&Content=The+first+Comment&Content=The+second+Comment
But what we need to have MVC map them correctly to the BlogPost view model, we need this naming convention:
Content=The+content+of+the+BlogPost&Comments[0].Content=The+first+Comment&Comments[1].Content=The+second+Comment
How can this be achieved in a clean way? We can only think of two ways which both seem to compromise the design:
Either we pass the BlogPost as a model to the partial view such that we can define the text area like so: #Html.TextAreaFor(x => x.Comments[i].Content). But this means we couple the partial view for comments to the parent view model - you could think of a scenario where the same partial view should be used in a different context, which is not possible if the partial view depends on the parent view model. Futhermore, the i would have to be passed to the partial view somehow.
Or we fall back to explicitely defining the name of every single field with strings: #Html.TextArea(ViewBag.Prefix + ".Content").
Is there any way to tell the partial view to apply a certain prefix to all field names?
chiccodoro,
if you create and EditorFor template of type Comment, mvc will handle all of this beautifully for you. However, that will only work well in a scenario where the rows are already present in the DB. Exampel from SO:
Submiting Parent & Children in razor
If you need to create new rows on the fly, then you'll have to use a little bit of trickery to allow the fields to operate as required. I used an article from steven sandersons website which allows you to add collection items at runtime and still retains unobtrusive validation etc. see this SO question and related article ref:
Editing a Variable Length List, ASP.NET MVC 3 Style with Table
I have created my own customized lots of architecture including n-tier layers for different different technology.
Currently working on n-tier architecture with asp.net mvc framework. The problem is I have entity framework at data access layer. As the entities will have all it's relational metadata and navigation properties, it becomes heavier one. I am feeling like it is not wise to expose this entities directly over mvc view.
I am more favor in exposing own customized model of entities over mvc view which one be lighter one.
But this also leads me overhead of converting data from my original entities to customized model.
For example I have Employee entity which is as generated from edmx file of entity framework. It contains total 20 fields with all navigation properties.
Now over view in mvc I need to show only 2 fields for edit.
So do we need to expose original entity to view or need to create DTO/customized model of that two field and than expose that view?
I would use a view model. I have learnt not to expose my domain objects to the view, I rather map my domain object to the view model and return this view model to the view.
Here is a partial view model, you might have more properties if you need more employee data to create/edit or display:
public class EmployeeViewModel
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
}
In my action method of my controller it would look something like this:
public ActionResult Edit(int id)
{
Employee employee = employeeRepository.GetById(id);
// Mapping can be done here by using something like Auto Mapper, but I am
// manually mapping it here for display purposes
EmployeeViewModel viewModel = new EmployeeViewModel();
viewModel.FirstName = employee.FirstName;
viewModel.LastName = employee.LastName;
return View(viewModel);
}
And then your view might look something like this:
<td>First Name:</td>
<td>#Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.FirstName, new { maxlength = "15" })
#Html.ValidationMessageFor(x => x.FirstName)
</td>
I prefer to have a view model that has only the values of employee that is needed on the view. Let say your employee has 20 properties, and you only need to update 2 fields, why then pass all 20 to the view? Use only what you need.
You can expose original entity, that is nothing bad. But as soon as you need some other information on the view e.g. instead of Name and Lastname you need FullName, then you should create an EmployeeViewModel with only needed properties. You initialize it with desired values in an action and then pass it to the view.
I have a database through which I connect to by using Entity framework. My Home View consists of many partial views that display different parts of the application. In my controller i would like to send a model containing all those different Entity data objects to my view, and then send the needed info to my particular partial views. I believe I need a view model for this but have never done this before. Let me summarize my objective:
I have four tables: currentFav,TopTenFav,Genres, and Songs
I have created a repository class with some query functions such as find all the songs, add a song and so on.
My index view is divided into partial views such as current fav, top ten, and genres.
My question is how would I send my model from the controller to my view and then from there to all of my partial views, anyone got an idea? thx
How I would design your ViewModel is to create an Interface for each of your Partial views such that:
interface IPartialView1 //Name it appropriately
{
currentFav CurrentFav { get; }
}
Then on your actual ViewModel:
class HomeViewModel : IPartialView1, IPartialView2,....
{
currentFav CurrentFav { get; set; }
}
Populate your HomeViewModel as you see fit, and in your partial views:
<!-- CurrentFav-Partial.cshtml -->
#Model IPartialView1
<span>#model.CurrentFav.color</span>
This allows you to create any Model you want to pass into the view, and as long as it has the interface each of the Partials need to render they can. Each ViewModel can contain any number of other models/classes via Interfaces for any type of view you create.