Question

I’ve read many articles which they state that querying should not be placed in the Controller, but I can’t seem to see where else I would place it.

My Current Code:

public class AddUserViewModel 
{        
    public UserRoleType UserRoleType { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> UserRoleTypes { get; set; }

}

public ActionResult AddUser()
    {
        AddUserViewModel model = new AddUserViewModel()
        {

            UserRoleTypes = db.UserRoleTypes.Select(userRoleType => new SelectListItem
            {
                Value = SqlFunctions.StringConvert((double)userRoleType.UserRoleTypeID).Trim(),
                Text = userRoleType.UserRoleTypeName
            })
        };
        return View(model);  
    }

The View:

<li>@Html.Label("User Role")@Html.DropDownListFor(x => Model.UserRoleType.UserRoleTypeID, Model.UserRoleTypes)</li>

How do I retain the View Model and Query and exclude the User Type that should not show up?

Answer 1

I think that you are doing it just fine.

Any way… all you can do to remove the querying logic from controller is having a ServiceLayer where you do the query and return the result.

The MVC pattern here is used correctly… what your are lacking is the other 2 layers (BusinessLayer and DataAccessLayer)… since ASP.NET MVC is the UI Layer.

UPDATE, due to comment:

Using var userroletypes = db.UserRoleTypes.Where(u=> u.UserRoleType != 1);
is OK, it will return a list of UserRoleType that satisfy the query.

Then, just create a new SelectList object using the userroletypes collection… and asign it to the corresponding viewmodel property. Then pass that ViewModel to the View.

BTW, I never used the db.XXXX.Select() method before, not really sure what it does… I always use Where clause.

SECOND UPDATE:
A DropDownList is loaded from a SelectList that is a collection of SelectItems.
So you need to convert the collection resulting of your query to a SelectList object.

var userroletypes = new SelectList(db.UserRoleTypes.Where(u=> u.UserRoleType != 1), "idRoleType", "Name");

then you create your ViewModel

var addUserVM = new AddUserViewModel();
addUserVM.UserRoleTypes = userroletypes;

and pass addUserVM to your view:

return View(addUserVM ); 

Note: I’m assuming your ViewModel has a property of type SelectList… but yours is public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> UserRoleTypes { get; set; } so you could change it or adapt my answer.