Question

Here is the situation I am struggling with. I have an Object Model:

public class MyModel 
{
  public string Prop1 {get; set;}
  public string Prop2 {get; set;}
//etc
  
}

Then I have Object ModelView

public class MyModelView
{
  public MyModel MyModelObject;

  public SelectList PropToBeSelected1 {get; set;}
  public SelectList PropTobeSelected2 {get; set;}
 //etc
  
}

I have the MyModelRepository class as well that does the delete, update operations for MyModel.

All good and clear so far.

Question: PropToBeSelected1 and PropTobeSelected2 are drop down lists whose contents come from the database. Should the methods retrieving these contents be put in my MyModelRepository? Or should I create another repository for ViewModel?

Answer 1

First you really don’t want domian-ish objects in your viewModel. Your viewModel should be clean with only primitives (like strings, ints… etc). So I’d suggest using a AutoMapper to map your two string props to your viewModel.

With the select list, there are many ways to go about this but I can imagine if they are lists of properties then they are not actual entities, but value objects instead. In this case creating a repository for them is over kill and boarders bad design.

I’d put the ‘get’ of the property lists in your MyModelRepository. Something like

_myModelRepository.getProperties1For(myModel);

Then AutoMap again on to get your select list.

Edit:
Like @M.Radwan pointed out for complex domain models I’ll make viewModels insdie viewModels for easy of mapping.

Domain Model–

public class User : Entity
{
   public Address Address { get; set; }
}
public class Address
{
   public string Street {  get; set; }
   public string Zip { get; set; }
}

would map to

public class DetailsViewModel
{
  public int Id { get; set; }
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public AddressViewModel Address { get; set; }
  
  public class AddressViewModel
  {
    public string Street { get; set; }
    public string Zip { get; set; } 
  }
}

which in our experience has been the only reason to add any complexity to your viewModel. We will put SelectLists in our viewModel though but lately we’ve been using IEnumerables of inner viewModels and calling custom EditorFor or DisplayFor to turn them into a dropdown / list of checkboxes / radio buttons.