Setting default value in Model.Count() in View MVC

Question

I'm new to MVC and trying to build an application which have departments and for each department there are employees listed under that department !

so my question is HOW do I set a default value Model.Count() in the View page

here's my code (Please note that when I loop in Model and if there's NO employee in that particular department the Model.Count() is always 0 and ActionLink is not appearing in the page ! so I need to set a default value for the Model, if you wondering why I'm using such implementation for the ActionLink that because I want to pass the current DepartmentId to the Create View and populate it to the @Html.HiddenFor for the employee Department automatically )

Any help would be appreciated

<p>
    @Model.Count() = 1; 

    @foreach (Employee employee in Model)
    {
        @Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create", new { id = employee.DepartmentId })

        if (!employee.Equals(1))
        {
            break;
        }

    }    
</p>

My Controller

[HttpGet]
    [ActionName("Create")]
    public ActionResult Create_Get(int id)
    {
        Employee employee = new Employee();
        employee.DepartmentId = id; 
        return View(employee);
    }

    [HttpPost]
    [ActionName("Create")]
    public ActionResult Create_Post()
    {
        Employee employee = new Employee();
        TryUpdateModel(employee);

        if (ModelState.IsValid)
        {
            EmployeeContext employeeContext = new EmployeeContext();
            employeeContext.AddEmployee(employee);
            return RedirectToAction("Index","Employee", new { id = employee.DepartmentId });
        }
        return View();
    }

My Department and Employee list

Answer 1

Your code does not makes sense! Count() method returns the number of items in the collection. You cannot assign/set a new value to that! The left side part of an assignment statement should be a variable, property or indexer, Not a method!

What you should be ideally doing is, have a view model which has list of employees and department id.

public class EmployeeListVm
{
  public List<Employee> Employees { set;get;}
  public int DepartmentId { set;get;}
  public string DepartmentName { set;get; }
}

and in your GET action, set the 2 property values and send that to the view

public ActionResult EmployeeList(int departmentId)
{
   var vm =new EmployeeListVm();
   vm.DepartmentId=departmentId;

   //You can also get more info about department ex : Name
   var dept= GetDeapermentFromId(departmentId);
   vm.DepartmentName = dept.Name;

   // to do : Load vm.Employees
   return View(vm);
}

Assuming GetDeapermentFromId method accepts a department id and returns a department entity/DTO with data.

Now your view should be strongly typed to this new view model. Inside the view, now you can use the DepartmentId property as needed for building a link

@model EmployeeListVm
<h2>Showing employees for @Model.DepartmentName</h2>
@foreach(var item in Model.Employees)
{
  <p>@item.EmployeeName</p>
}
@Html.ActionLink("Create new","Create",new { id=Model.DepartmentId})