Navigation properties question in my view models

Entity Framework, View, Web Forms, ,

Hi

I have two viewmodels

public class modelA
{
public int Id {get;set;}

public virtual modelB child {get;set;}
}

public class modelB
{
public int Id {get;set;}

public virtual modelA parent {get;set;}
}

var viewModel = new modelA{ Id = 1, child = new modelB {Id = 2}}

now I have a partial view in which I put in modelB, the child, but I can’t access model A, what am I missing.

It simply says parent is null.

You haven’t set the parent property to anything so it is null

var viewModel = new modelA{ Id = 1, child = new modelB {Id = 2}}
viewModel.child.parent = viewModel;

I guess the EF is making me lazy, since its already done with entity models, I was hoping it would be done automatically.

Can I just confirm your example will only have 2 models in memory and is fairly efficient?

modelA will have a list of modelBs, and I need them all to have a list to reference, so I plan to put the list in modelA and reference it from modelB, is this a good idea?

ModelB doesn’t have a parent defined. It would be automatically populated if you were using EF, but you aren’t in the example above so you need to set it manually:

var a = new modelA{ Id = 1};
var b = new modelB {Id = 2, parent = a};
a.child = b;
var viewModel = a;

Note: Navigational Properties are purely an Entity Framework pattern. 

Thanks both for the info, so If I have a list of modelB’s and in model be that needs to access a list of strings, is it better to put the list of strings in modelA and reference it with a naviagation property or put a list in each modelB?

I’m not clear what your model looks like, but I think I would do the following:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public List<ModelB> ModelBs {get;set;}
    public List<string> StringsToReference {get;set;}
}

Or does that miss something?

public class ModelA
{
public int Id {get;set;}
public List<SelectListItem> SomeList {get;set;}

public List<ModelB> Children {get;set;}
}

public class ModelB
{
public int Id {get;set;}
public ModelA Parent {get;set;}
public string SomeValue
{
get 
{ return Parent.SomeList.Where(t => t.Value = "1").FirstOrDefault().Text;}
}

or

public class ModelA
{
public int Id {get;set;}

public List<ModelB> Children {get;set;}
}

public class ModelB
{
public int Id {get;set;}
public List<SelectListItem> SomeList {get;set;}
}

I know it modelA gets more complicated then it changes but based on this simple example I assuming the first option is better, to know for sure would be better.

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