Question

I have a nested class such as :

public class Jar
{
    public IEnumerable<NailClippings> Nails { set; get; }
    public IEnumerable<People> Donors { set; get; }
}

My controller passes a single Jar to my view, string typed as

@model Test.ViewModels.Jar

I can loop through the contents of Nails and Donors easily with something like this

@foreach(var item in Model.Nails)

My issue is with using HTML helpers to generate Display names for me

@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Nails.Length)

I have come up with a solution by changing the type of the inner nested classes to List, appending .ToList() at the end of my queries and changing the line to

@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Nails[0].Length)

Being forced to use List and have an index [0] to display a name is goofy to me. Is there an alternative method for referencing inner nested class attributes?

Edit: View

<table>
    <tr>
        <th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Nails[0].Length)</th>
        .
        .
    </tr>
    @foreach(var item in Model.Nails){
    <tr>
        <td>@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Length</td>
        .
        .
    </tr>
    }
</table>

Answer 1

Instead of

model.Nails[0].Length

You could use

model.Nails.First().Length

Without having to convert to a List.