Displaying standard DataTables in MVC

Question

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

User · Accepted Answer

This is not  wrong  at all  it s just not what the cool guys typically do with MVC  As an aside  I wish some of the early demos of ASP NET MVC didn t try to cram in Linq-to-Sql at the same time  It s pretty awesome and well suited for MVC  sure  but it s not required  There is nothing about MVC that prevents you from using ADO NET  For example   Controller action   public ActionResult Index         ViewData  Message      Welcome to ASP NET MVC         DataTable dt   new DataTable  MyTable        dt Columns Add new DataColumn  Col1   typeof string         dt Columns Add new DataColumn  Col2   typeof string         dt Columns Add new DataColumn  Col3   typeof string          for  int i   0  i  lt  3  i                  DataRow row   dt NewRow            row  Col1      col 1  row     i          row  Col2      col 2  row     i          row  Col3      col 3  row     i          dt Rows Add row              return View dt     passing the DataTable as my Model     View   w  Model strongly typed as System Data DataTable    lt table border  1  gt       lt thead gt           lt tr gt               lt  foreach  System Data DataColumn col in Model Columns      gt                   lt th gt  lt   col Caption   gt  lt  th gt               lt      gt           lt  tr gt       lt  thead gt       lt tbody gt       lt   foreach System Data DataRow row in Model Rows      gt           lt tr gt               lt   foreach  var cell in row ItemArray     gt                   lt td gt  lt   cell ToString     gt  lt  td gt               lt      gt           lt  tr gt       lt      gt                lt  tbody gt   lt  table gt    Now  I m violating a whole lot of principles and  best-practices  of ASP NET MVC here  so please understand this is just a simple demonstration  The code creating the DataTable should reside somewhere outside of the controller  and the code in the View might be better isolated to a partial  or html helper  to name a few ways you should do things   You absolutely are supposed to pass objects to the View  if the view is supposed to present them   Separation of concerns dictates the view shouldn t be responsible for creating them   In this case I passed the DataTable as the actual view Model  but you could just as well have put it in ViewData collection   Alternatively you might make a specific IndexViewModel class that contains the DataTable and other objects  such as the welcome message   I hope this helps

User · Answer

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 lt IClient gt  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 lt IClient gt  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 lt IClient gt              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 lt CISOnlineMVC DAL IClient gt          ViewBag Title    CLIENT ALL INFORMATION       lt h2 gt CLIENT ALL INFORMATION lt  h2 gt    lt table gt       lt tr gt           lt th gt  lt  th gt           lt th gt Last Name lt  th gt           lt th gt First Name lt  th gt           lt th gt Client ID lt  th gt           lt th gt DOB lt  th gt           lt th gt Gender lt  th gt           lt th gt RBHA ID lt  th gt           lt th gt AHCCCS ID lt  th gt       lt  tr gt    foreach  var item in Model         lt tr gt           lt td gt               Html ActionLink  Select    ClientDetails    Cis   new   id   item ClientId    null             lt  td gt           lt td gt               item LastName          lt  td gt           lt td gt               item FirstName          lt  td gt            lt td gt               item ClientId          lt  td gt            lt td gt               item BirthDate          lt  td gt            lt td gt              Gender    ADD in            lt  td gt            lt td gt               item RbhaId          lt  td gt            lt td gt               item AhcccsId          lt  td gt       lt  tr gt      lt  table gt

User · Answer

Here is the answer in Razor syntax    lt table border  1  cellpadding  5  gt       lt thead gt          lt tr gt             foreach  System Data DataColumn col in Model Columns                            lt th gt  col Caption lt  th gt                      lt  tr gt       lt  thead gt       lt tbody gt       foreach System Data DataRow row in Model Rows                lt tr gt             foreach  var cell in row ItemArray                            lt td gt  cell ToString   lt  td gt                      lt  tr gt                   lt  tbody gt   lt  table gt

[c#] Displaying standard DataTables in MVC

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