Question

I’m using Extensions for ASP.NET MVC Q3 2011(open source version) with Razor engine and Asp.net MVC3 architecture.
I want to bind a grid to a entity in my database which has self referring structure (like a tree). Therefore, I can not define it like examples with fixed levels, because I do not know how many levels this grid has. So, I want to bind my grid dynamically to a model.

 public class Category : Entity
{
    public virtual int Id {private set; get; }
    public virtual string Title { set; get; }
    public virtual string Description { set; get; }
    public virtual string ParentsPath { set; get; }
    public virtual IList<Category> Children { get; private set; }
    public virtual Category Parent { get; set; }

 }

I’m also using Fluent NHibernate and because of that I store children and parent in my entity.

Is there a way to do this? I couldn’t find anything in documentations.
Am I missing something? because in Ajax and Winform components, it has been implemented.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You cannot do it automatically, You need a foreach iteration and generating the items and then add them to the tree manually.

I did it for PanelBar when I needed to show a hierarchicy.

Here is an example :

@(Html.Telerik().PanelBar()
.Name("Details")
.ExpandMode(PanelBarExpandMode.Multiple)    
.Items(items =>
    {
        var parent = Model.ParentWorkItem;
        List<WorkItem> lst = new List<WorkItem>();

        while (parent != null)
        {
            lst.Add(parent);
            parent = parent.ParentWorkItem;
        };
        for (int i = lst.Count-1; i >=0;i-- )
        {
            parent = lst[i];
            items.Add()                    
                .Expanded(false)
                .Text("...")
                .LoadContentFrom(...);
        }
        items.Add()
            .Expanded(true)
            .Text(...)
            .Content(....);
    })

)

Hope to be helpful.