Question

For Example: Let’s say that I want to return a view that displays a list of cars and also show a section of dealers in your area. These are two disjointed pieces of data.

My view inherits a list of cars like the following:

public partial class CarLot : ViewPage<List<Cars>> {  } 

Now from the controller I can return the view like the following:

return View(Model.GetCars()); 

To render this, my markup would look something like the following:

<% foreach (Car myCar in ViewData.Model) {some html here} %> 

This takes care of the list of cars, but my question is, how do I handle the list of dealers? Does the view support multiple inheritance or am I going to have to hit the model again form the markup? I know it can be done that way, but am not sure if it is the best practice.

Answer 1

Create a data transfer object

public class CarLotViewModel {      public List<Car> Cars { get; set; }      public List<Dealer> NearbyDealers { get; set; } } 

Set your view to use the view model:

public partial class CarLot : ViewPage<CarLotViewModel> {     } 

Then in your controller:

var model = new CarLotViewModel();  model.Cars = GetCars(); model.NearbyDealers = GetDealers();  return View(model); 

Then enumerate each collection in your view:

<% foreach (Car car in ViewData.Model.Cars) { %> .... <% foreach (Dealer dealer in ViewData.Model.NearbyDealers) { %>