Question

This question relates to an MVC4 project with Entity Framework (database first)

I am passing an (EF) collection of ‘Company’ objects to a view.

I need to show the name of the ‘Primary User’ which is stored as int (foreign key) in each ‘Company’ object.

I am able to get the PrimaryUserID like this :

@foreach (var item in Model)
{
      <div>@item.PrimaryUserID</div>     
}

but I cannot figure out how to access the PrimaryUser object from the ID?

Is there a way to do this without passing a custom model containing the PrimaryUser object to my view?

Any help would be much appreciated!

//EDIT – this is how I currently pass the collection to my view

   public ActionResult Installers(int id = 0)
    {
        CompanyType installer = db.CompanyTypes.Single(ct => ct.Description == "Installer");

        return View(installer.Companies.ToList());
    }

Answer 1

You can use the Navigation Property in your model.

Make sure your have included the property in your EF query.
( This is called “eager loading” )

public ActionResult Installers(int id = 0)
{
    CompanyType installer =
      db.CompanyTypes
        .Include( ct => ct.Companies.Select( c => c.PrimaryUser ) )
        .Single( ct => ct.Description == "Installer" );

    return View( installer.Companies.ToList() );
}

Then just access the property in your markup:

<div>@item.PrimaryUser.Name</div>