Question

I am not sure if and how one can do this but in my controller I have:

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Detail(int userId)
{
  UserDetailViewModel user = new UserDetailViewModel();
  user.UserId = userId;
  user.Email = Email;
  return View(user);
}

My UserDetailViewModel:

  namespace Zinc.Web.Areas.Admin.ViewModels.User

  public class UserDetailViewModel
  {
    [LocalizedRequired]
    [DisplayName("UserId")]
    public int UserId { get; set; }

    [LocalizedRequired]
    [DisplayName("Email")]
    public string Email { get; set; }
  } 

I have the Id of the user but need to get the rest of the details like email, name, surname etc.. I have just put email down for now..
Must I pass into the view another model that has those details?

Answer 1

You would need to add all those properties into your view model (i.e. UserDetailViewModel).

Then create a method which can get the values and set them to the properties using the id as a parameter:

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Detail(int userId)
{
   UserDetailModel user = GetUser(userid);
   UserDetailViewModel model = new UserDetailViewModel;
   model.UserId = user.UserId;
   model.Email = user.Email;
   model.Name = user.Name;
   //etc...
   return View(model);
}

Example of GetUser:

public UserDetailModel GetUser(userId){
   //Do some data access here
   UserDetailModel user = new UserDetailModel;
   user.UserId = //Set from data accessed
   //etc..
   return user;
}

The advantage of applying this to a general Model rather than your View Model is that this can be applied to other View Models without having to make multiple methods for data access of the same data.