Question

I’ve created an Audit table for an ASP.NET MVC application to track key changes and actions. I want to present the contents of this table to authorized users in an easily readable format on the view.

The Audit table is (simplified) like so:

ID (int) | StaffID (int) | Action (string) | Timestamp (datetime)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1987     | 27            | Delete entry: 9 | 2010-02-22 12:30:12
1988     | 34            | Add user: 912   | 2010-02-22 12:48:19

So far I’ve just been presenting that using the default “List” view in MVC however we’re getting towards the end of development and I’d like to tidy up this view a bit by showing staff names rather than StaffIDs.

Initially, I’m using the approach of creating a “hybrid model” that contains both Audit and Staff and passing that to the view:

public class AuditModel
{
  public AuditModel(List<Audit> AuditEntries, List<Staff> AllStaff)
  {
    this.Audit = AuditEntries;
    this.Staff = AllStaff;
  }

  public List<Audit> Audit { get; private set; }
  public List<Staff> Staff { get; private set; }
}  

[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
public ActionResult ViewAuditTrail()
{
  var Audit = (from a in db.Audits orderby a.Timestamp descending select a).ToList();
  var Staff = (from s in db.Staffs select s).ToList();
  return View(new AuditModel(Audit, Staff));
}

But that leads to messiness in the view:

<%
foreach (var Entry in Model.AuditEntries)
{
  var StaffDetails = Model.AllStaff.Where(s => s.ID == Entry.StaffID).SingleOrDefault();
  /* output HTML */
}
%>

So I guess what I want to do is create a new model with the following attributes:

• ID (int) – Audit.ID
• StaffName (string) – Staff.ID [s => s.StaffID == Staff.ID]
• Action (string) – Audit.Action
• Timestamp (datetime) – Audit.Timestamp

But I want to do this in the controller and pass it to the view as a ToList() so my view can be cleaner and simpler.

Any tips?

Answer 1

Okay, so I got adventurous and tried to figure this out myself and I’ve got a solution but I’m not sure how correct it is!

So, firstly, I created a new class:

public class AuditEntries
{
  public int ID { get; set; }
  public string StaffName { get; set; }
  public string Action { get; set; }
  public System.DateTime Timestamp { get; set; }
}

I then refactored my ViewAuditTrail action to look like so:

[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
public ActionResult ViewAuditTrail()
{
  var Audit = (from a in db.Audits orderby a.Timestamp descending select a).ToList();

  var AuditEntry = new List<AuditEntries>();

  foreach (var e in Audit)
  {
    var Staff = (from s in db.Staffs where s.ID == e.StaffID select s).SingleOrDefault();

    AuditEntries Entry = new AuditEntries();
    Entry.ID = e.ID;
    Entry.StaffName = Staff.Forename + " " + Staff.Surname + " (" + Staff.ID.ToString() + ")";
    Entry.Action = e.Action;
    Entry.Timestamp = e.Timestamp;

    AuditEntry.Add(Entry);
  }

  return View(AuditEntry.ToList());
}

And now my ViewAuditTrail view is just a strongly-typed view bound to the AuditEntries class using the default MVC list view type.

It seems to work fine but I’m sure it can be improved upon – does anyone have any suggestions?