MVC Master-Detail CRUD

Question

I'm starting with MVC and i have some basic questions that maybe you can orient me a little bit: I'm Using MVC5 with Razor and EntityFramework 6. No AngularJS skills here. I have a classic Master-Detail CRUD where i need to create Order and OrderItems. My idea es that when you create the order, you can add the items in the same form and then with one SAVE button create both records on the database (The Order and the Items).

I've created the "Orders" CRUD very good with scaffolding, and it works perfect. But now i need to add to the same VIEW the items, and here is what i'm getting lost and try different ways to do this:

BINDING ISSUE: I thought that probably i could add the list of OrderItems to the binding header on the CREATE event. My OrderController has this method: public ActionResult Create([Bind(Include = "Id,Date,*other fields*")] Order order) and it works fine with the ORDER CRUD operations. But, now, if need to add a List to the list of fields binded on that header, is that possible? How should i save the data in the View then?
JSON: Another way i thought, was to remove the Binding header and use Json, but all the examples i've seen was using AngularJS and i have all the site done except for this CRUD, i preffer to let that option for the real last chance. On the other hand, i've found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir9cMbNQP4w and it's exactly what i need to do, but: It's on MVC4 and not MVC5, and also i have all my entities validation in my model (extended) class and some of them in the controller as well (exclusively the ones related to the Creation or editing the order). Tell me if i'm wrong here please!
PARTIAL VIEW: The last way i've just tried was with Partial View. I've created succesfully the Initial data load based on this tutorial: http://dotnetmentors.com/mvc/render-partialview-with-model.aspx , but after that, i need to add new items to my order, or edit/delete the existing ones and here is where i get lost: Should i have different CREATE/EDIT methods for the partial views? How i send the data then? How i can use only one SAVE button that saves everything at the same time?

I'm getting more lost when i look for more information.... so, here i am asking for help to you guys !

Thanks a lot in advance !!

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 03 '16 at 13:50

Create a custom view model:

public class NewOrderViewModel
{
    public Order order { get; set; }
    public OrderItem[] orderItems { get; set; }
}

Then you can use this in the view by changing @model NewOrderViewModel at the top and you will be able to use like:

@Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.order.Phone);
@Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.orderItems[0].ItemName);

You will need some javascript to copy the html and create new form elements for each new orderItem the user wants to add.

Then your controller signature would look like:

public ActionResult Create(NewOrderViewModel content)

MVC Master-Detail CRUD

1 Answers1