Using two strongly typed models for one MVC view

Question

Am I missing something fundamental to the principals of MVC or am I going mad?

If I have a view that displays a list of books and a list of authors, I have to create class that would have the list of Books and list of authors as properties. Right?

I would then strongly type the view to use this class.

Now I want to create a new page with the same listings but that also has a list of promotions. Do I need to create another class with a list of Books property, a list of authors property and a list of promotions property?

If I am creating classes for all the views I am creating a hell of a lot of extra work. Am I supposed to be creating strong typed partials for each of these? What if the layout differs each time?

Currently I have a BaseViewData class that is used by all the views as it contains some common properties. However, I am now struggling to get other items in without completely bloating the BaseViewData class.

Please can someone help me understand the theory that all the simple examples don't cover.

Answer 1

I've ran into the same problem. I think the general solution for most people is to create a container class that contains the Books and Authors models that you really want, and pass that container to your View.

Sub-optimal, yes, but it works. Hopefully this will be addressed in future versions of the framework.

Answer 2

Create ONE container class for ever object in your system, and use for all views - simple

Objects with null value have no real overhead

Answer 3

This has been asked before.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/525701/passing-multiple-result-sets-to-a-view-from-a-controller-in-asp-net-mvc

Answer 4

I use the ViewData extension methods from MvcContrib that add support for multiple strongly typed models (as long as they are different types). Code to add them to the ViewData looks like this:

User currentUser = GetCurrentUser();
List<Project> projectList = projectRepository.GetRecentProjects(currentUser);
ViewData.Add(user);
ViewData.Add(projectList);

Code in the view to pull them out looks like this:

User user = ViewData.Get<User>();
List<Project> projectList = ViewData.Get<List<Project>>();

This removes both the "magic strings" and the type casting. Note, this doesn't do anything with Model property of the view.