how to edit json data runtime? - asp.net

i want to add the data to existing generated json data in my asp.net mvc application , what i have to do ?
means , suppose i have class Company that having list of Departments as property. but json serialization is not able to support such kind of circular reference. so i thought how if, i get serialize the Company object first without list of Departments, then get departments for each company and then serialize this list and append data to company serialized data. i know this may be wrong way . but i have to do because of time ultimatum. please guide.

You could define a view model where you won't have any circular references:
public class DepartmentViewModel
{
public string DepartmentName { get; set; }
}
public class CompanyViewModel
{
public IEnumerable<DepartmentViewModel> Departments { get; set; }
}
and then you would map between your model and view model (you could use AutoMapper for this) and finally return the view model to the view.
For example:
public ActionResult Index()
{
var companies = _repository.GetCompanies();
var companiesVM = Mapper.Map<IEnumerable<Company>, IEnumerable<CompanyViewModel>>(companies);
return Json(companiesVM, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}
Now you no longer would have circular references and you will be able to successfully serialize the view model to JSON and you would only pass the information that is required to the view.

Related

When to use BindAttribute?

I'm learning asp.net mvc and wonder when we need to use BindAttribute.
The first case (using Bind):
Model:
public class Book
{
public string Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Author { get; set; }
}
Controller:
public IActionResult Create([Bind(nameof(Book.Name), nameof(Book.Author))] Book model)
{
return Ok();
}
The book Id would be generated on server side. So, client side has nothing to do with it, every actions try to change/make the id is prevented.
The second case (not using Bind):
Model:
public class BookViewModel
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Author { get; set; }
}
Controller:
public IActionResult Create(BookViewModel model)
{
return Ok();
}
Because the second model doesn't contain Id property, we don't need to prevent from creating or changing.
I prefer the second. It's easy to manage model.
Is there a case we must use Bind attribute?
We use bind when we want that some properties of complex property are ignored when received on server. It could be for safety or other reasons.
When this action is executed the MVC model binder will use the request parameters to populate the user parameter's properties, as you may already know. However, the Bind attribute tells the model binder to only populate properties with names specified.
So in this case only the Username, FullName and Email properties will be populated. All others will be ignored.
See here for more details: http://ittecture.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/tip-of-the-day-199-asp-net-mvc-defining-model-binding-explicitly/
If you have situation when you only have to ignore one parametar from binding you could use Exclude property:
[Exclude]
public Entity Name {get; set;}
Bind is used to increase security and unauthorized data to be posted on server . In your model class , suppose you have content property also. if the content property is not needed in the future. Then it would be difficult for you to remove all the occurrences of that property. Here you can use bind property like this
[Bind(exclude="content")]
or you can bind only selected properties to be posted on server by including the properties like this
public ActionResult create([Bind(Include = "Name,Author")] Modelclass modelclass)
{
//Do something here
}
You can learn more about it here
Second approach is more suitable instead writing all the properties and bind them but there are some situations where you must bind user like you have a roles property or IsAdmin property in your model then you might not want that user somehow posts the IsAdmin or roles properties to the server . That's where you can use Bind attribute

Displaying multiple lists of data in a view (i.e. CustomerContacts, CustomerLocations)

I have a CustomersController and in the Detail.cshtml view I need to display a list of that Customer's contacts and a list of that Customer's locations. I have a Detail(int? id) ActionResult and I have access to my CustomerService from within the controller. As of now in my Detail ActionResult I am able to do:
var cust = _custService.GetCustomerById(id);
return View(cust);
How would one recommend getting the rest of my lists in the view. I think I will create a GetContacts(customerID), GetLocations(CustomerID) within my CustomerService and then call them just like I call GetCustomerByID above. If I were to do it this way how would I have access to these lists in my view.
The next thing I was thinking about was possibly creating a ViewModel that has all of the basic customer properties like customer.Name, customer.Phone but then trying to figure out how I also make sure the ViewModel has the customer's contacts and locations. Would I just add 2 more properties to the ViewModel like customer.contacts and customer.locations since EF6 will make them available to me?
Any suggestions on the best way to go about getting multiple lists of information related to an entity in a view? Customer contacts and Customer locations are both one-to-many
The best practice is using a view model to transfer the data, as you have thought about.
public class CustomerDetailViewModel {
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Phone { get; set; }
public List<Contact> Contacts { get; set; }
public List<Location> Locations { get; set; }
}

How do I populate my model from a database entry?

I have set up a large form with lots of entries. It populates my model and then saves to the database. I also need to be able to pull this information out of the database, put it into the model, and populate a bunch of fields with it for review. How do I do this?
Using ASP.NET MVC 4 Razor.
var db = new TechProjPlansContext();
TechProjPlan model = new TechProjPlan();
I can set up my data context and model, but where do I go from here to populate the model with a data entry chosen by ID?
You can search by givenId and if found return result type of TechProjPlan otherwise null
var resultFound = db.TechProjPlans.Where(e=>e.Id = givenId).FirstOrDefault();
I strongly recommend following this tutorial step by step. From the tutorial to answer your question:
Write a Model class like:
public class Movie
{
public int ID { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }
public string Genre { get; set; }
public decimal Price { get; set; }
}
Add a DbSet to your Context class: (TechProjPlansContext in your project)
public class MovieDBContext : DbContext
{
public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; }
}
Make sure you can connect to the database server, check your connectionStrings in your Web.config file.
As you wanted to filter only one Entity by using ID, you need a Controller class:
public ActionResult Details(int id = 0) // here id is set to 0 if it's null
{
Movie movie = db.Movies.Find(id);
if (movie == null)
{
return HttpNotFound();
}
return View(movie);
}
As you see, you'll be returning View(movie), that means you return Details page with the Entity (a movie) you got from the database. And have a View, that renders to actual HTML code the client will see. At the top of it, add the line:
#model MvcMovie.Models.Movie // (something TechProjPlans.Models.Movie in your project)
#Html.LabelFor(model => model.Title)
This will create a simple text showing the movie's title.
It's not logical to go deeper within an answer, so rest is up to you with that tutorial. Just keep in mind that the code above is only one example and you can use endless variations within each level for your situation.
You can right click on the directory Controllers, select Add New and select your Model class and Context class at the page. That will produce a Controller and Views (index, edit, delete, details, insert) tied to it which will be a good way to start your MVC study.

ASP.Net Model without DbContext?

I am new to ASP.Net, if my question sounds very basic, please be polite.
I have created a ASP.Net MVC4 project. A page in the application will display names of the files in tabular form.
The names of the files are obtained by finding files in a particular folder on the server. So there is no need for me to have a database for model.
When user opens the page, the server side code will list all the files in the directory and should return a list of Strings.
I am following ASP.Net MVC tutorial here and it appears I have to have a DBContext class and also a database. In my case that's not needed
So that question is can I add my model without having to add code like below and still be able to use the feature of model ? any simple example would be great.
public class MovieDBContext : DbContext
{
public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; }
}
Any class can serve as a model in this case. For example, if you just want to have a Movie model, you can have something as simple as this:
public class Movie
{
public string Title { get; set; }
}
A view can bind to that model, to an enumeration of that model, etc.
For fetching your data from the file system, one approach could be a simple factory method on that model. Maybe something like this:
public class Movie
{
public string Title { get; set; }
public static IEnumerable<Movie> GetMovies()
{
// get the list of movies from the file system, for example as a list of strings
var movies = SomeFileSystemInteraction();
return movies.Select(m => new Movie { Title = m });
}
}
Then in your controller you can get the list of movies to bind to the view:
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View(Movie.GetMovies());
}
There's no need for a database, it's just used in tutorials because it's the most common case. But you can bind your views to any object you'd like.
You do not need that MovieDBContext class if you are not dealing with database. But having a model is a good idea to represent your entity(in this case the Folder). It is just a POCO class.
public class Folder
{
public string Name { set;get;}
public int NumberOfchilds { set;get;}
//Other properties as needed.
}
Now you can use the Model class to pass data between differnt places. For example. You can move the code which reads the data from file system to a Service class method and the method can return a list of this class/A single instance of this class as needed. Your controller action method can call the service method.
public class FolderService
{
public Folder GetRecentlyCreatedFolder()
{
var folder=new Folder();
//Set the properties of this object
// folder.Name="MySecret";
return folder;
}
}
and in your Action method
public ActionResult Items()
{
var srv=new FolderService();
var recentFolder=srv.GetRecentlyCreatedFolder();
return View(recentFolder);
}
Yes, you can use a model which is not stored in a database at all. Your case sounds like an obvious example.
Model, View, Controller makes database access easily abstractable but doesn't necessitate a database.
As much as I like entity framework I've never loved how most tutorials for MVC seem to marry the two - They are essentially unrelated and I think it really muddies the waters for a lot of programmers new to the framework.
All you need for a model is just a plain old class. Instead of using the dbcontext you'd simply use whatever code you need to load your data.

How to preserve input ids when editing lists in ASP.NET MVC?

I'm working with ASP.NET MVC 4, but I on't think that matters for the purpose of this question.
I have a relatively complex model for my edit view. Like this:
public class Recipe_model
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public List<Recipe_Ingredient_model> Ingredients { get; set; }
}
where Ingredients is
public class Recipe_Ingredient_model
{
public int RecipeID { get; set; }
public int? UnitID { get; set; }
public double? Quantity { get; set; }
public Ingredient_model Ingredient { get; set; }
}
which itself contains the Ingredient model.
When I make a form for this, the built-in Html.EditorFor() doesn't work for anything past the properties of the Recipe_model, so I'm using partial views to display the editor for each of the sub-models.
That works fine as far the interface goes, but when I submit the form to the controller and try to bind to the Recipe_model automatically using
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Edit(Recipe_model model)
{
return View(model);
}
it fails because the ids of the input elements in the partial views do not conform to the correct pattern (I think ParentModel_Property).
Short from hard-coding the ids in the partial view or binding manually from the FormCollection in the controller, is there some way to get the correct ids generated in the partial view so that the model will bind automatically on submit?
This is common problem. Instead of simple partials, use EditorTemplates (special folder for models) and binding will work automatically.
For example look at this question: Updating multiple items within same view
in addition to the answer given by #WebDeveloper
you can also try and create a custom model binder though a little more complex but will add to the ease of posting and binding form value to the objects in long run
have a look here http://patrickdesjardins.com/blog/asp-net-mvc-model-binding
you will have to manually take all the form values and bind them to the model once and then you will be able to use the #HtmlFrom methods on the razor to do anything and you will get all the value inside the objects inside the action methods as you like.

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