[c#] Displaying standard DataTables in MVC

Perhaps this is just completely wrong, but back in the days of Webforms you would return a Dataset which you would then bind to a grid. But now in MVC you're not supposed to pass a datatable because you cannot serialize it and it's technically passing objects into the View where it doesn't belong? But how on earth am I meant to display data on a view?! I can't use LINQ to SQL classes here since this is a pure in memory data structure.

Ideally I'd just like to able to have an object which I can iterate within the view.

I'm really at a bit of a loss I have read the article from the "Gu" and I can only summarize that I have to pass back a ViewData Object instead?? Am I going nuts here?

Cheers from Blighty

Jon

While I tried the approach above, it becomes a complete disaster with mvc. Your controller passing a model and your view using a strongly typed model become too difficult to work with.

Get your Dataset into a List ..... I have a repository pattern and here is an example of getting a dataset from an old school asmx web service private readonly CISOnlineSRVDEV.ServiceSoapClient _ServiceSoapClient;

    public Get_Client_Repository()
        : this(new CISOnlineSRVDEV.ServiceSoapClient())
    {

    }
    public Get_Client_Repository(CISOnlineSRVDEV.ServiceSoapClient serviceSoapClient)
    {
        _ServiceSoapClient = serviceSoapClient;
    }


    public IEnumerable<IClient> GetClient(IClient client)
    {
        // ****  Calling teh web service with passing in the clientId and returning a dataset
        DataSet dataSet = _ServiceSoapClient.get_clients(client.RbhaId,
                                                        client.ClientId,
                                                        client.AhcccsId,
                                                        client.LastName,
                                                        client.FirstName,
                                                        "");//client.BirthDate.ToString());  //TODO: NEED TO FIX

        // USE LINQ to go through the dataset to make it easily available for the Model to display on the View page
        List<IClient> clients = (from c in dataSet.Tables[0].AsEnumerable()
                                 select new Client()
                                 {
                                     RbhaId = c[5].ToString(),
                                     ClientId = c[2].ToString(),
                                     AhcccsId = c[6].ToString(),
                                     LastName = c[0].ToString(), // Add another field called   Sex M/F  c[4]
                                     FirstName = c[1].ToString(),
                                     BirthDate = c[3].ToDateTime()  //extension helper  ToDateTime()
                                 }).ToList<IClient>();

        return clients;

    }

Then in the Controller I'm doing this

IClient client = (IClient)TempData["Client"];

// Instantiate and instance of the repository 
var repository = new Get_Client_Repository();
// Set a model object to return the dynamic list from repository method call passing in the parameter data
var model = repository.GetClient(client);

// Call the View up passing in the data from the list
return View(model);

Then in the View it is easy :

@model IEnumerable<CISOnlineMVC.DAL.IClient>

@{
    ViewBag.Title = "CLIENT ALL INFORMATION";
}

<h2>CLIENT ALL INFORMATION</h2>

<table>
    <tr>
        <th></th>
        <th>Last Name</th>
        <th>First Name</th>
        <th>Client ID</th>
        <th>DOB</th>
        <th>Gender</th>
        <th>RBHA ID</th>
        <th>AHCCCS ID</th>
    </tr>

@foreach (var item in Model) {
    <tr>
        <td>
            @Html.ActionLink("Select", "ClientDetails", "Cis", new { id = item.ClientId }, null) |
        </td>
        <td>
            @item.LastName
        </td>
        <td>
            @item.FirstName
        </td>
         <td>
            @item.ClientId
        </td>
         <td>
            @item.BirthDate
        </td>
         <td>
            Gender @* ADD in*@
        </td>
         <td>
            @item.RbhaId
        </td>
         <td>
            @item.AhcccsId
        </td>
    </tr>
}

</table>

Here is the answer in Razor syntax

 <table border="1" cellpadding="5">
    <thead>
       <tr>
          @foreach (System.Data.DataColumn col in Model.Columns)
          {
             <th>@col.Caption</th>
          }
       </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
    @foreach(System.Data.DataRow row in Model.Rows)
    {
       <tr>
          @foreach (var cell in row.ItemArray)
          {
             <td>@cell.ToString()</td>
          }
       </tr>
    }      
    </tbody>
</table>