Question

I’m coming from webforms, and I’m trying to replicate a simple data model in MVC. I’m a .NET and C# novice, so excuse me if this is a really simple question. I have “Letters” that each have one category and multiple recipients. EF seems to create my data model correctly on the SQL backend, but I cant access the category in the view. Here is my model:

namespace FFLettersMVC.Models
{
    public class Letter
    {
        public int id {get; set;}
        public DateTime dateCreated { get; set; }
        public string letterTitle { get; set; }
        public DateTime dateMailed { get; set; }
        public string createdBy { get; set; }
        public string Type { get; set; }
        public int CategoryID { get; set; }
        public Category Category { get; set; }
        public virtual ICollection<Recipient> Recipient { get; set; }
    }
    public class Category
    {
        public int id { get; set; }
        public string name { get; set; }
    }
    public class Recipient
    {
        public int id { get; set; }
        public int letterID { get; set; }
        public string fname { get; set; }
        public string lname { get; set; }
        public string ssnTin { get; set; }
        public string email { get; set; }
        public Letter Letter { get; set; }
    }
}

Controller Code for Details Page:

//
// GET: /Letter/Details/5

public ViewResult Details(int id)
{
    Letter letter = db.Letters.Find(id);
    return View(letter);
}

View Code Attempting to access comments property:

<div class="display-label">Category</div>
<div class="display-field">
     @Html.DisplayFor(model => model.Category.name)
</div>

Answer 1

You need to make it virtual, as you did the Recipient.

public virtual Category Category { get; set; }

Marking the property as ‘virtual’ notifies EF to override the property when creating its proxies.