Question

May be a stoopid question:

I have a number of reference tables in an application database, which I want to be updated from my MVC3 site.

I can create a “ReferenceController” which has CRUD methods for each of these tables

or

I can create a “EntityController” which has CRUD methods JUST for this one reference table (entity).

Not sure if there is a sensible pattern to follow for this?

---

EDIT:

If I do create a controller per Aggregate, then how do you name the methods on the controller?

e.g.
ReferenceController.CreateBusiness();
MyApplication/Reference/CreateBusiness
?

I have multiple, totally unrelated “reference” entities, would that mean a controller with a very large number of methods in there?
e.g. List, Create, Read, Update, Delete + confirmations?

Can you make controller methods Generic and have Create(T …) ?

Answer 1

I would do something like this:

A Generic Crud Repository like:

class CrudRepo<TEntity> where T : class{
  void All();
  void Add(TEntity entity);
  void Edit(TEntity entity);
  void Delete(TEntity entity);
}

Then A generic Crud Controller like

class CrudController<TEntity> where T : class{
    CrudRepository<TEntity> Repository;

    [HttpPost]
    ActionResult Add(TEntity entity){
      Repository.Add(entity);
    }

    // Similer for other actions
}

And for specific type of entities, just extend CrudController like:

class StudentController : CrudController<Student>

Edit 1:

If you have really TOOOO many entities, there are ways to eliminate the need of inheriting the CrudController for each entity. You may want to write your custom ControllerFactory for that.