asp.net mvc automapper parsing

Question

let's say we have something like this

public class Person
{
   public string Name {get; set;}
   public Country Country {get; set;}
}

public class PersonViewModel
{
   public Person Person {get; set;}
   public SelectList Countries {get; set;}
}

can automapper be used to perform to parse from Person into PersonViewModel and back ?

Answer 1

It sounds like you want to send a Person to the view via the PersonViewModel which has all the bonus info you need to generate and return a new (or updated) Person object.

If this is correct, I don't think you need automapper at all. From what I understand of automapper it is for mapping collection of related objects to a more view model type of state, but in this case, you are sending a Person to the client and trying to receive a Person back. In this case, it seems easier to use your view model to populate the page, but have the page return a Person instead (or extract the updated Person from the view model to save a few keystrokes).

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EDIT: That being said, yes you should be able to use automapper to move the info around. Its just a unnecessary layer for this easy scenario.

Answer 2

Don't use AutoMapper for this - it's not worth it. For example, in the cases where you have a validation failure and you show the form again - AutoMapper is not executed here (usually). We usually go two routes:

• If the list is not context-specific, create an HtmlHelper that queries some ISelectListProvider for the select list items: Html.DropDownList(). You'd use your IoC container of choice to locate the personListProvider, query for the list of items, and populate the dropdown list.
• If the list is context-specific, just construct the list in the controller action

Answer 3

if one chose to, you could do this:

public class Person
{
   public string Name {get; set;}
   public Country Country {get; set;}
   public Country[] GetCountries 
   {
    ... add method for countries here
   }
}

Then in your ViewModel you can have your select list pull data from that collection.

public class PersonViewModel
{
   public Person Person {get; set;}
   public Country[] Countries {get; set;}
   public SelectList Countries { get{ .. add new select list code here getting vals from Countries..}}
}

Again, this is for context sensitive lists. You are however muddling concerns a wee bit here (should a person get a list of countries?)