Question

I have a table called Field in my database and a table called FieldValue. My models look like this:

[Table("Field")]
public class Field
{
    [Key]
    [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public int FieldId { get; set; }
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

[Table("FieldValue")]
public class FieldValue
{
    [Key]
    [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public int FieldValueId { get; set; }
    public int FieldId { get; set; }
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

I would like to display each field as the label and then a textbox for each FieldValue associated with that Field but I’m not quite sure how to approach this. I am using MVC 4 if that matters.

Answer 1

You could return the joined array to a view model class (untested for syntax/typos):

public class ViewModel
{
    public KeyValuePair<string,string> Fields { get; set; }
}

var kvps = Fields.Join(FieldValues,
    f => f.FieldId,
    fv => fv.FieldId,
    (f, fv) => 
        new KeyValuePair<string,object>(f.Value, fv.Value)
    }).ToArray();
var viewModel = new ViewModel { Fields = kvps };

return View(viewModel);

Then in the view, simply iterate over the values:

@model MyNamespace.ViewModel

@foreach (var kvp in Model.Fields)
{
    <span class="field-label">@kvp.Key</span>
    <span class="field-value">@Html.TextBoxFor(_ => kvp.Value)</span>
}

If you put this in a form, then the postback should also work correctly (since it uses TextBoxFor).