Question

Untill now in C# MVC3 i only had to use one controller which used only one model.

But now i think i need access to two models in my controller. I’m wondering if this is allowed in the MVC pattern?

I have a ProfileController. The ProfileController shows the profile info of a user obviously. But there’s also some other data that i wish to show, like the groups a user created. For that i also have a GroupsModel.

How am i supposed to get both data from one controller?

Answer 1

How am i supposed to get both data from one controller?

By using a view model:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public ProfileModel Profile { get; set; }
    public GroupsModel Groups { get; set; }
}

and then passing this view model to the view:

public ActionResult ShowProfile()
{
    var model = new MyViewModel();
    model.Profile = ...
    model.Groups = ...
    return View(model);   
}

And now your view will be strongly typed to the view model:

@model MyViewModel

and you can display information:

@Html.DisplayFor(x => x.Profile.SomeProperty)