Passing data from a controller to the view in ASP.NET MVC

Question

I have the following in my controller (HomeController.cs) which generates a Bikes variable that I'm trying to pass into the view (Index.cshtml):

public string xmlPath = HostingEnvironment.MapPath("~/App_Data/bikes.xml");

public ActionResult Index()
{
    // get the most recent 20 records
    XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(xmlPath);

    var bikes = from b in xml.Descendants("Photo")
            select new
            {
                date = (DateTime)b.Element("Date"),
                staffno = (Int32)b.Element("StaffNo"),
                file = (string)b.Element("File"),
                crimeref = (string)b.Element("CrimeRef")
            };

    var Bikes = bikes.ToList();

    return View(Bikes);
}

I now want to loop through the results and display them on the page using Razor using the following code:

@foreach (var bikes in Bikes))
{ 
    <tr>
        <td>@(bikes.date)</td>
        <td>@(bikes.staffno)</td>
        <td>@(bikes.file)</td>
        <td>@(bikes.crimeref)</td>
    </tr>
}

However, despite passing the Bikes variable into the View() command in the controller, the Bikes list is not accessible from within my view.

Any suggestions would be very welcome, thank you :)

Put a breakpoint on "var Bikes = bikes.ToList();" and ensure your bikes is being populated correctly. — PaulBinder
– PaulBinder, Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:53
Thank you Paul, I've just checked and it does seem like Bikes is being populated correctly: i.imgur.com/YyXFIrR.jpg — Nick
– Nick, Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:55
have you tried using <li> instead of <tr>? Or do you need to have it in a table? — Izekid
– Izekid, Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:56
Probably you can find solution here stackoverflow.com/questions/5120317/… — Vokinneberg
– Vokinneberg, Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 14:41

James · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-05 13:53:57Z

Well firstly, in your view you wouldn't have a variable called Bikes, the view has a property named Model which is a reference to the data you pass in. Secondly, I am not sure MVC supports passing anonymous types to the view, instead you should create a view model specifically for the data required

public class BikeViewModel
{
    public DateTime Date { get; set; }
    public int StaffNo { get; set; }
    public string File { get; set; }
    public string CrimeRef { get; set; }
}
...
var bikes = (from b in xml.Descendants("Photo")
            select new BikeViewModel
            {
                 Date = (DateTime)b.Element("Date"),
                 StaffNo = (Int32)b.Element("StaffNo"),
                 File = (string)b.Element("File"),
                 CrimeRef = (string)b.Element("CrimeRef")
            }).ToList();

return View(bikes);

Then in your view

@model List<BikeViewModel>
...
@foreach(var bike in Model)
{
    <tr>
        <td>@(bike.Date)</td>
        <td>@(bike.StaffNo)</td>
        <td>@(bike.File)</td>
        <td>@(bike.CrimeRef)</td>
    </tr>
}

Thank you very much for the reply, would I have to create a new BikeViewModel.cs file under the Models folder for this to work?
@Nick you can create the BikeViewModel.cs file anywhere you like, just as long as you reference that namespace in your view.
OMG! It actually worked - thank you so, so much James. I'm now going to start the MVC tutorial from scratch as opposed to trying to cobble things together, as you can see I still have a lot to learn. Thanks again!

astian · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-05 13:54:05Z

It would be named 'Model' inside the view. When you pass an object to the view it is the model. So your view can either be strongly typed (there will be a line saying that its model inherits from a specific class - its usually done in the wizzard when you create a view), or if you choose not to assign a specific class for the model the Model object will be of type dynamic, which means that it will be evaluated run time, so the compilator will allow you to call everything on it. Long story short, try

@foreach (var bikes in Model))
{ 
   <tr>
       <td>@(bikes.date)</td>
       <td>@(bikes.staffno)</td>
       <td>@(bikes.file)</td>
       <td>@(bikes.crimeref)</td>
   </tr>
}

Unfortunately I work with aspx so I cant be sure that Im right, but try it this way or find information about how are models passed to the view in razor

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