Question

When trying to loop through data in a View that is returned from a controller, I get an error ” ‘object’ does not contain a definition for ‘CustomerID’ and no extension method ‘CustomerID’ accepting a first argument of type ‘object’ could be found”

Here is my view

<% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%>

    <%foreach (var item in (IEnumerable)Model)
      { %>
      <%= Html.Encode(item.CustomerID) %>

    <%} %>

 <% } %>  

Here is the controller:

public ActionResult Index()
        {
            Models.NorthwindDataContext nw = new Models.NorthwindDataContext();

            var qry = from ord in nw.Orders
               join cust in nw.Customers on ord.CustomerID equals cust.CustomerID
               select new Models.OrdersModel
                      {
                          CustomerID = ord.CustomerID,
                          OrderID = ord.OrderID,                          
                          OrderDate = ord.OrderDate.Value,
                          ShipCountry = ord.ShipCountry
                      };
            var ordrs = qry.ToList();
                          return View(ordrs);

        } 

and here is my class

public class OrdersModel
    {
        [Required]
        [Display(Name = "OrderID")]
        public int OrderID { get; set; }

        [Required]   
        [Display(Name = "OrderDate")]
        public DateTime OrderDate { get; set; }

        [Required]
        [Display(Name = "CustomerID")]
        public string CustomerID { get; set; }

        [Display(Name = "ShipCountry")]
        public string ShipCountry { get; set; }  
    } 

Answer 1

<%foreach (var item in (IEnumerable<OrdersModel>)Model)
      { %>
      <%= Html.Encode(item.CustomerID) %>

    <%} %>

The CustomerID is not turning up because you’re not providing a type to your IEnumerable cast.

.NET does the best it can and treats each item as an object, which does not contain the CustomerID property.

EDIT:

Inspired by Jan’s comment, this is the way I’d actually go about it.

Create a better model, where Orders is a property of the view model.

public class OrderListVM 
{
  public List<OrdersModel> Orders { get; set; }

  // The benefit of using this model is you can include extra stuff here.
}

Then in your controller:-

var vm = new OrderListVM { Orders = qry.ToList() };

return View(vm);

As Jan says, make sure the view is strongly-typed, and ready to accept OrdersListVM as its type.

You can check this by looking at the page directive in your .aspx page.

<%@ Page Title="" 
    Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" 
    Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<YourNameSpace.OrderListVM>" %>

Finally, change your markup to:-

<%foreach (var item in Model.Orders)
      { %>
      <%= Html.Encode(item.CustomerID) %>

    <%} %>

Everything will have the right type, and if you need to put anything else on your view apart from a bare list of orders, you have a container to place it in.