Question

I am simply trying to retrieve some data from a database, and display it on the _Layouts.cshtml file. And i wanna do this in the with a method in the models folder, right??

My following script down here works, but it’s not pretty, take a look.

Here is my model:

namespace MvcBreakingNews.Models
{
public class ListCategories
    {
        public IList<string> arrTest() {
            IList<string> myList = new List<string>();
            DataClassesDataContext dt = new DataClassesDataContext();

            var q = from c in dt.categories select c;
            foreach (var item in q)
            {
                myList.Add(item.category1.ToString());
            }
                return myList;
            }
        }
    }
}

And here is my _Layout.cshtml

@using MvcBreakingNews.Models
...

@{
   ListCategories objC = new ListCategories();

   foreach (var item in objC.arrTest())
   {
       <li><a href="#">@item</a></li>         
   }
}

Now what i want to do, or what i think i want to do. Is to get rid of the foreach loop in my method and send the array directly to the _Layout.cshtml

How would i do this?

Answer 1

You can use the ToList() extension method:

public IList<string> arrTest()
{
    DataClassesDataContext dt = new DataClassesDataContext();

    var q = from c in dt.categories
            select c.category1.ToString();

    return q.ToList();
}

Or you could return q directly, which would require changing the return type:

public IQueryable<string> arrTest()
{
    DataClassesDataContext dt = new DataClassesDataContext();

    return from c in dt.categories
           select c.category1.ToString();
}