Question

I just learned of the Nuget package Loop Helper for WebMatrix. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find any documentation or project site. Does anyone have any information on how to use this or where the project site is?

Answer 1

I think the supplied sample pretty much covers everything you need to know, the loop tracker isn’t as mysterious as you might think.

All Loop.OuterLoop is doing is referencing the parent loop if you’re in one and it’s being tracked, for example:

@{
  int[] outerThings = new int[] {1,2,3,4};
  var innerThings = new[] {"a","b","c", "d"};

  foreach (int outerThing in outerThings.Track())
  {
    <li>@outerThing

    @foreach(var innerThing in innerThings.Track())
    {
      <li>---->@innerThing

      @if (Loop.OuterLoop.First)
      {
        <strong>Start of outer loop (index is: @Loop.OuterLoop.Index)</strong>  
      }

      @if (Loop.OuterLoop.Last)
      {
        <strong>end of outer loop (index is: @Loop.OuterLoop.Index)</strong>  
      }
      </li>
    }
    </li>
  }
}

Under the bonnet the helper is just wrapping access to your arrays, lists and collections and tracking forward movement through these items with an incrementing internal index value.

Update:

Here’s an example using three nested loops with the very inner loop referencing the most outer loop (outerThings):

@{
  int[] outerThings = new int[] {1,2,3,4};
  var middleThings = new[] { "A", "B", "C", "D" };
  var innerThings = new[] { "a", "b", "c", "d" };

  foreach (int outerThing in outerThings.Track())
  {
    <li>@outerThing

    @foreach(var middleThing in middleThings.Track())
    {
      <li>---->@middleThing

      @foreach(var innerThing in innerThings.Track())
      {
        <li>-----+---->@innerThing

        @if (Loop.OuterLoop.OuterLoop.First)
        {
          <strong>
            Start of outerThing loop (index is: @Loop.OuterLoop.OuterLoop.Index)
          </strong>  
        }

        @if (Loop.OuterLoop.OuterLoop.Last)
        {
          <strong>
            End of outerThing loop (index is: @Loop.OuterLoop.OuterLoop.Index)
          </strong>  
        }
        </li>
      }
      </li>
    }
    </li>
  }
}