Question

i’m wondering how to control whether a column is visible in a Html.Grid if nothing has been returned in the list. So if in the below example Model.Comment doesn’t have a value in the ExampleList, then the column should not be rendered.

@Html.Grid(Model.ExampleList).Columns(c =>
    {
        c.For(a => string.Format("{0:dd/MM/yyyy}", a.DateRequested)).Named("Date Requested");
        c.For(a => a.Comment).Named("Comment");
        c.For(a => a.Completed).Named("Completed");
    })

How can this be achieved?

Answer 1

You should use a view model and inside this view model you should have a boolean property indicating whether something should be visible or not. Obviously all the logic about determining its value is not the view responsibility => it’s the controller or the model. So for example you could have the following view model:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public bool ShouldDisplayCommentsColumn 
    { 
        get 
        {
            return .... // Check the Items and decide whether you 
                        // should be showing the Comments column or not
        }
    }
    public IEnumerable<SomeOtherViewModel> Items { get; set; }
}

and then in the view:

if (Model.ShouldDisplayCommentsColumn)
{
    c.For(a => a.Comment).Named("Comment");
}