Question

I want to have a column as row number in MVC WebGrid. How can I do it?

Answer 1

You could use a view model that will contain a property indicating the row number.

Let’s suppose that you have the following domain model:

public class DomainModel
{
    public string Foo { get; set; }
}

Now you build a view model that will correspond to the requirements of your view:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public int RowNumber { get; set; }
    public string Foo { get; set; }
}

and then:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    // fetch the domain model from somewhere
    var domain = Enumerable.Range(1, 5).Select(x => new DomainModel
    {
        Foo = "foo " + x
    });

    // now build the view model
    // TODO: use AutoMapper to perform this mapping
    var model = domain.Select((element, index) => new MyViewModel
    {
        RowNumber = index + 1,
        Foo = element.Foo
    });

    return View(model);
}

Now your view becomes strongly typed to the view model of course:

@model IEnumerable<MyViewModel>

@{
    var grid = new WebGrid(Model);
}

@grid.GetHtml(
    columns: grid.Columns(
        grid.Column("RowNumber"),
        grid.Column("Foo")
    )
)

Now let’s suppose that for some foolish reason you don’t want to use view models. In this case you could turn your view into spaghetti code if you prefer:

@model IEnumerable<DomainModel>

@{
    var grid = new WebGrid(Model.Select((element, index) => new { element, index }));
}

@grid.GetHtml(
    columns: grid.Columns(
        grid.Column("RowNumber", format: item => item.index + 1),
        grid.Column("Foo", format: item => item.element.Foo)
    )
)