Empty kendo-ui grid - kendo-ui

Question

I want to populate a kendo-grid with a list of employees. When I send the list of employees directly to the grid, the grid populates. When I manipulate the list slightly, the grid is empty. The employee class has a bool "selected" field that I need to manipulate. When stopping the controller in the debugger in both cases the list has 600 employees, so the data is there.
Here is the code from the view (I'm not even binding to the "selected" property - thought that might be the problem)
#(Html.Kendo().Grid<TRS.MVC.Models.SelectEmployeeModel>()
.Name("gridEmployee")
.HtmlAttributes(new { style = "height: 300px" })
.Columns(columns =>
{
columns.Bound(p => p.CompanyCode).Width(100);
columns.Bound(p => p.EmployeeCode).Width(100);
columns.Bound(p => p.EmployeeName).Width(100);
})
.Selectable(selectable => selectable
.Mode(GridSelectionMode.Single))
.Navigatable()
.Scrollable()
.DataSource(dataSource => dataSource
.Ajax()
.Read(read => read.Action("GetEmployees", "EmployeeSelectDlg"))
)
)
Here is the code that works
public ActionResult GetEmployees([DataSourceRequest]DataSourceRequest request)
{
List<SelectEmployeeModel> employeesForGrid;
employeesForGrid = (from e in trs.Employees select e).ToList();
return Json(employeesForGrid.ToDataSourceResult(request));
}
And the code that does not work (grid is empty). In both cases when stopping in the debugger, "employeesForGrid" has 600 items.
public ActionResult GetEmployees([DataSourceRequest]DataSourceRequest request)
{
List<Employee> jobEmployees;
List<SelectEmployeeModel> employeesForGrid;
Job selectedJob = (from j in trs.Jobs.Include("JobEmployees") where j.JobKey == selectedJobKey select j).First();
if (selectedJob.JobEmployees.Any())
jobEmployees = (from j in selectedJob.JobEmployees select j).Select(eq => eq.Employee).ToList();
else
jobEmployees = new List<Employee>();
employeesForGrid = (from e in trs.Employees select new SelectEmployeeModel() { Employee = e, Selected = jobEmployees.Contains(e) }).ToList();
return Json(employeesForGrid.ToDataSourceResult(request));
}
No error messages just an empty grid.

Answer 1

Well to me the structure is different, in the first case the collection is full with objects of type SelectEmployeeModel.
employeesForGrid = (from e in trs.Employees select e).ToList();
And in the second case the collection is full with SelectEmployeeModels objects which Employee property is actually the SelectEmployeeModel, rest of the properties seems to be unspecified.
What happens if you bind the columns to that nested property
columns.Bound(p => p.Employee.CompanyCode).Width(100);
columns.Bound(p => p.Employee.EmployeeCode).Width(100);
columns.Bound(p => p.Employee.EmployeeName).Width(100);

Answer 2

So as it turns out you can't do this:
public class SelectEmployeeModel
{
public Employee Employee { get; set; }
public bool Selected { get; set; }
public string CompanyCode { get { return this.Employee.CompanyCode; } }
public string EmployeeCode { get { return this.Employee.EmployeeCode; } }
public string EmployeeName { get { return this.Employee.EmployeeName; } }
public SelectEmployeeModel()
{
}
}
Instead I just did this:
public class SelectEmployeeModel
{
public bool Selected { get; set; }
public string CompanyCode { get; set; }
public string EmployeeCode { get; set; }
public string EmployeeName { get; set; }
public SelectEmployeeModel()
{
}
}
And changed the controller code:
employeesForGrid = (from e in trs.Employees select new SelectEmployeeModel() {
CompanyCode = e.CompanyCode,
EmployeeCode = e.EmployeeCode,
EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName,
Selected = jobEmployees.Contains(e) }).ToList();
That fixed it.