使用继承时的MVC / Razor DisplayAttribute

Question

I'm setting up a bunch of Razor pages for maintaining reference tables. The basic structure in the data context is this:

public class RefTableBase {
    public int Id {get;set;}
    public string Value {get;set;}
}

public class UserType: RefTableBase {}

public class ReferenceType: RefTableBase {}

The scaffolded Razor pages work correctly there. However, When I have a class that calls the derrived tables, the pages don't display what I expect.

public class SomethingImportant {
    public int Id {get;set;}
    public string Name {get;set;}

    public int UserTypeId {get;set;}
    public virtual UserType UserType {get;set;}

    public int ReferenceTypeId {get;set;}
    public virtual ReferenceType ReferenceType {get;set;}
}

When the index.cshtml page is scaffolded, the tables headers look like this:

@model IEnumerable<Models.SomethingImportant>

<table class="table">
    <tr>
        <th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Id)</th>
        <th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Name)</th>
        <th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.UserType.Value)</th>
        <th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ReferenceType.Value)</th>

But when the page is actually rendered in the browser, the column headings show

Id    Name    Value    Value

When what I want is:

Id    Name    User Type     Reference Type

I've tried using DisplayAttribute on the members within the class, but it didn't work.

public class SomethingImportant {
    // ...........
    [Display(Name="User Type")]
    public int UserTypeId {get;set;}
    public virtual UserType UserType {get;set;}
    // ...........
}

Outside of skipping the inheritence and actually setting the DisplayAttribute for each and every class in the derived classes, is there any way I can get it to show how I want?

Answer 1

You can simply put the Display attribute on the properties in question:

public class SomethingImportant {
    public int Id {get;set;}
    public string Name {get;set;}

    public int UserTypeId {get;set;}
    [Display(Name="User Type")]//here
    public virtual UserType UserType {get;set;}

    public int ReferenceTypeId {get;set;}
    [Display(Name="Reference Type")]//and here
    public virtual ReferenceType ReferenceType {get;set;}
}

And remove calling .Value on the view.

<th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Id)</th>
<th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Name)</th>
<th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.UserType)</th>
<th>@Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ReferenceType)</th>

If you need .Value and it's a property of that class, you can put the Display attribute on those properties instead.