Including a model within a model, I think? - asp.net

Question

I am extremely new to ASP/MVC3/C# but currently undertaking a project that requires me to list all the users in the database as a drop down list, ideally I want to filter this so that it only shows users in certain roles (i.e. either Admin, Staff or Student).
However my problem lies in the following, I have a controller (Requests.cs) with a method that does the following, and allows me to go to http://server/Requests/UserList:
public ActionResult UserList()
{
// Create our view model
var users = Membership.GetAllUsers();
var model = new StudentListViewModel
{
Users = users.OfType<MembershipUser>().Select(x => new SelectListItem
{
Value = x.ProviderUserKey.ToString(),
Text = x.UserName
})
};
return View(model);
}
A view model that looks like this:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Web.Mvc;
namespace AcademicRegistry.ViewModels
{
public class StudentListViewModel
{
[Display(Name = "select user")]
public string SelectedUser { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Users { get; set; }
}
}
And the relevant view:
#model AcademicRegistry.ViewModels.StudentListViewModel
#using (Html.BeginForm())
{
#Html.LabelFor(x => x.SelectedUser)
#Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedUser, Model.Users)
<button type="submit">OK</button>
}
All of these work fine (in fact this is all code I found from another post on here) and this view displays what I want, i.e. a dropdown list with the value set to the userId and the text displayed as the username.
However I want this to be displayed within a different view, namely EditUser, however this already has a model associated with it (#model AcademicRegistry.Models.Requests):
#model AcademicRegistry.Models.Requests
#{
ViewBag.Title = "Edit";
}
<h2>Edit</h2>
<script src="#Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="#Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
#using (Html.BeginForm()) {
#Html.ValidationSummary(true)
<fieldset>
<legend>Requests</legend>
#Html.HiddenFor(model => model.Id)
<div class="editor-label">
#Html.LabelFor(model => model.StudentId)
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
*Wanting the dropdown list to show here*
</div>
<p>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />
</p>
</fieldset>
}
<div>
#Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index")
</div>
I was wondering if anyone knew how I would go about having my drop down show where it needs to? This dropdown will be used on quite a few pages so ideally needs to be re-usable, and as I mentioned filtered to only show users that fall in to the 3 roles I have setup.

Answer 1

You would need to place the code that currently gets the list of users and creates the SelectListItem list into a seperate method that other controllers can access.
You would then add the Users property to the ViewModels that will be displaying this list:
public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Users { get; set; }
So at this point, you have the list that you need to display. You can then either create a user control that takes the list and renders it, or just use the built-in DropDownList as you currently have:
#Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedUser, Model.Users)