Question

I apologize that I’m still extremely new to MVC so please bear with me.

I’m trying to create a dynamic list element for navigation in the _Layout.cshtml.
I’m not really too sure where to go from here. Or where to put my database code. Thanks.

    <ul id="navlist">
    @foreach (???)
        {<li class="navitem"><a href="@nav.Href">@nav.Name</a></li>}
    </ul>

Answer 1

Go through a tutorial which builds an application from start to finish using mvc. It will be much better than asking this type of question. Plus you will learn a lot more. But in helping out here is what you do

MVC Controller – Home Controller

public class HomeController : Controller
{
   public ActionResult Index()
   {
    var viewModel = new IndexViewModel();
    viewModel.NavItems = // Get your data and assign it here.

    return View(viewModel);

    }
}

public class IndexViewModel
{
   public List<NavItem> NavItems {get; set;}
}

public class NavItem
{
    public string Href {get; set;}
    public string Name {get; set;
}

Razor View

@model IndexViewModel

<ul>
@foreach(var item in Model.NavItems)
{
  <li class="navitem"><a href="@item.Href">@item.Name</a></li>
}
</ul>

You can see here all of the basic parts in MVC. We have a Controller which builds a Model and passes it to a View. M V C. The 3 is for the version lol 🙂

Again this is super basic. I would suggest http://www.asp.net/mvc, tekpub.com, for getting a better foundation