Question

First I have a Display Template in Views > Blog > DisplayTemplates:

@model Domain.Model.BlogPost
<div class="blogSummary">
    @Html.ActionLink(Model.Title, "post", new { Id = Model.PostID }, new { @class = "titleLink" })
    <div class="subInfo">
        Posted by @Model.Author on @Model.PostedDate.ToString("D") | @Model.PostComments.Count
        Comment(s)</div>
    <br />
    <div class="summaryText">
        @Html.Markdown(Model.Body.Length > 300 ? Model.Body.Remove(0, 300) + "..." : Model.Body)
        @Html.ActionLink("(view more)", "post", new { Id = Model.PostID })
    </div>
</div>

Then I have a view:

@model IEnumerable<Domain.Model.BlogPost>
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Index";
}
@Html.DisplayFor(x => x, "BlogPostSummary")

However, I am getting an error on the DisplayFor():

The model item passed into the
dictionary is of type
‘System.Data.Objects.ObjectSet`1[Domain.Model.BlogPost]’,
but this dictionary requires a model
item of type ‘Domain.Model.BlogPost’.

I’m having a bit of trouble understanding what’s going on. What is the best way to use the display template?

Answer 1

The problem is you’re trying to pass in a collection of BlogPosts, when a single BlogPost is expected.

Try:

@Html.DisplayFor(x => x[0], "BlogPostSummary")

Or something like:

@foreach (var post in Model)
    @Html.Display(post)

Note: I’m not convinced the second example is using Html.Display correctly. My suspicion is that the code would be better served using a partial instead of a display template.

UIHint

By default, ASP.NET MVC relies on naming conventions to link BlogPost the class to BlogPost.cshtml the display template. If however, you would like to use CustomBlogPost.cshtml as your display template, you can do so by applying the UIHint attribute.

public class DomainModel {
    [UIHint("CustomBlogPost")]
    public BlogPost Post { get; set; }
}