Question

Most of the code I see online on MVC3 has very little code in the controller, but I can’t seem to figure out how to make this code more streamlined.

Maybe if you take a look at it you can suggest improvements. If you need to see my UserModel class, let me know.

Here’s the code for the Account controller.

namespace WebUI.Controllers
{
    public class AccountController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Register()
        {
            UserModel model = new UserModel();         

            EFCityRepository cityRepo = new EFCityRepository();
            model.Cities = new List<SelectListItem>();
            foreach (var city in cityRepo.FindAllCities()) {
                model.Cities.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = city.Name, Value = city.CityId.ToString(), Selected = true });
            }

            EFGenderRepository genderRepo = new EFGenderRepository();
            model.Genders = new List<SelectListItem>();
            foreach (var gender in genderRepo.FindAllGenders()) {
                model.Genders.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = gender.Name, Value = gender.GenderId.ToString(), Selected = true });
            }

            return View(model);
        }

        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult Register(UserModel model) 
        {
            EFCityRepository cityRepo = new EFCityRepository();
            model.Cities = new List<SelectListItem>();
            foreach (var city in cityRepo.FindAllCities())
            {
                model.Cities.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = city.Name, Value = city.CityId.ToString(), Selected = true });
            }

            EFGenderRepository genderRepo = new EFGenderRepository();
            model.Genders = new List<SelectListItem>();
            foreach (var gender in genderRepo.FindAllGenders())
            {
                model.Genders.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = gender.Name, Value = gender.GenderId.ToString(), Selected = true });
            }

            if (ModelState.IsValid)
            {
                Domain.User user = new Domain.User();
                user.UserRoleId = 1;
                user.Nickname = model.Nickname;
                user.Name = model.Name;
                user.Lastname = model.Lastname;
                user.GenderId = model.GenderId;
                user.Address = model.Address;
                user.Email = model.Email;
                user.Telephone = model.Telephone;
                user.MobilePhone = model.MobilePhone;
                user.Carnet = model.Carnet;
                user.DateOfBirth = model.DateOfBirth;
                user.DateOfRegistry = DateTime.Now;
                user.LastDateLogin = DateTime.Now;
                user.IsActive = false;
                user.LanceCreditBalance = 5;
                user.LancesSpent = 0;
                user.Login = model.Login;
                user.Password = model.Password;
                user.EmailVerificationCode = "TempTokenString";
                user.CityId = model.CityId;

                EFUserRepository repo = new EFUserRepository();
                var result = repo.CreateUser(user);

                if (result == UserCreationResults.Ok)
                {
                    FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.Nickname, false /* createPersistentCookie */);
                    return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home");
                }
                else
                {
                    switch (result)
                    {
                        case UserCreationResults.UsernameExists:
                            ModelState.AddModelError("", "El nombre de usuario ya esta siendo utilizado.");
                            break;
                        case UserCreationResults.EmailAlreadyExists:
                            ModelState.AddModelError("", "Ese correo ya esta en uso.");
                            break;
                        case UserCreationResults.NicknameAlreadyExists:
                            ModelState.AddModelError("", "El nickname ya esta siendo utilizado.");
                            break;
                        case UserCreationResults.UnknownError:
                            ModelState.AddModelError("", "Algo durante el registro. Por favor intente de nuevo.");
                            break;
                        default:
                            break;
                    }
                }

            }

            // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form
            return View(model);
        }
    }
}

I’m using Entity Framework as my ORM, it generates a User class automatically for me. However, I made a User*Model* class so I could add data annotations for the views to use. Maybe this is the wrong idea?

Answer 1

I have many suggestions. For startes, read up about Dependancy Injection and Inversion of Control (DI and IoC). They will make all that boilerplate object instantiation a thing of the past.

Next, convert those for-each list builders into Linq expressions. Much more succinct and more likely faster as well.

Then, in your post handler, again do the same things there. In addition, get to know AutoMapper, which will automatically map your view to domain classes and make your life much easier.

If you did those things, your code would be reduced by 2x, maybe even 3.

EDIT:

An example linq query, because I really don’t know the definition of your objects… would look something like this:

model.Cities = cityRepo.FindAllCities().Select(city => new SelectListItem() { 
         Text = city.Name, Value = city.CityId.ToString()}).ToList();

Notice how you don’t have to new up a new List, since that’s returned by the ToList() method. It is also using projection to select the items into a new SelectListItem.

Basically, you could write your method like this, using Dependancy Injection, Linq, and AutoMapper (it looks longer because i had to break lines multiple times to fit the small viewing are of SO):

namespace WebUI.Controllers
{
    public class AccountController : Controller
    {
        private IGenderRepository _genderRepo;
        private ICityrRepository _cityRepo;
        private IUserRepository _userRepo;

        public AccountController(IGenderRepository gr, ICityRepository cr, 
               IUserRepository ur)
        {
            _genderRepo = gr;
            _cityRepo = cr;
            _userRepo = ur;
        }

        public ActionResult Register()
        {
            UserModel model = new UserModel();         

            // Selected property is ignored by MVC on SelectListItems
            model.Cities = _cityRepo.FindAllCities().Select(city => 
                    new SelectListItem() { Text = city.Name, 
                         Value = city.CityId.ToString()}).ToList();

            model.Genders = _genderRepo.FindAllGenders().Select(gender => 
                    new SelectListItem() { Text = gender.Name, 
                         Value = gender.GenderId.ToString()}).ToList();

            return View(model);
        }

        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult Register(UserModel model) 
        {
            model.Cities = _cityRepo.FindAllCities().Select(city => 
                    new SelectListItem() { Text = city.Name, 
                         Value = city.CityId.ToString()}).ToList();

            model.Genders = _genderRepo.FindAllGenders().Select(gender => 
                    new SelectListItem() { Text = gender.Name, 
                         Value = gender.GenderId.ToString()}).ToList();

            if (ModelState.IsValid)
            {
                Domain.User user = Mapper.Map<Domain.User, Model>(model)

                var result = _userRepo.CreateUser(user);
                if (result == UserCreationResults.Ok) {
                    FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.Nickname, false);
                    return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home");
                } else {
                    ModelState.AddModelError("", GetErrorString(result));
                }
            }

            // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form
            return View(model);
        }
    }
}