How to map poco to JSON using Automapper

Question

In my MVC 2 application I have a typical method that calls a web service, builds a JSON data object and returns it to the view.

Everything works fine, but I was wondering if there is a way to do the mapping with Automapper so I can remove the ugly code from my controller. Thanks in advance

Here is my Action method

public virtual ActionResult AllErrors(string sidx, string sord, 
                                      int page=1, int rows=10)
    {
        var pageSize = rows;
        var pageNumber = page;
        var orderBy = string.Format("{0} {1}", sidx, sord);

        var result = errorService.GetPagedOpenErrors(pageSize, page, orderBy);
        var errors = new List<IngestionErrorDataContract>(result.IngestionErrors);
        var totalPages = (int) Math.Ceiling(result.TotalRows/(float) pageSize);

        int index = 0;
        var list = new List<object>();
        errors.ForEach(e => list.Add(
                                new {
                                        i = index++,
                                        cell = new[] 
                                        {
                                            e.IngestionErrorId.ToString(),
                                            e.RunId.ToString(),
                                            e.ProcessDate.ToShortDateString(),
                                            e.Status,
                                            e.ErrorDetails
                                        }
                                    }));

        var jsonData = new
                           {
                               total = totalPages,
                               page = pageNumber,
                               records = result.TotalRows,
                               rows = list.ToArray()
                           };

        return Json(jsonData, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }

Answer 1

I solved it using the ConstructUsing method of AutoMapper. Here is my map

public void CreateMap()
    {
        Mapper.CreateMap<List<IngestionErrorDataContract>, object[]>()
            .ConvertUsing(
                errors =>
                    {
                        int index = 0;
                        var list = new List<object>();
                        errors.ForEach(e => list.Add(
                            new
                                {
                                    i = index++,
                                    cell = new[]
                                               {
                                                   e.IngestionErrorId.ToString(),
                                                   e.RunId.ToString(),
                                                   e.ProcessDate.ToShortDateString(),
                                                   e.Status,
                                                   e.ErrorDetails
                                               }
                                }));
                        return list.ToArray();
                    });
    }

and here is my action method now

public virtual ActionResult AllErrors(string sidx, string sord, int page=1, int rows=10)
    {
        var pageSize = rows;
        var pageNumber = page;
        var orderBy = string.Format("{0} {1}", sidx, sord);

        var result = errorService.GetPagedOpenErrors(pageSize, page, orderBy);
        var errors = new List<IngestionErrorDataContract>(result.IngestionErrors);
        var totalPages = (int) Math.Ceiling(result.TotalRows/(float) pageSize);

        var jsonData = new
                           {
                               total = totalPages,
                               page = pageNumber,
                               records = result.TotalRows,
                               rows = mapper.Map<List<IngestionErrorDataContract>,object[]>(errors)
                           };

        return Json(jsonData, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }

Much better I think