Single Controller an View for multiple Models

Question

I am new to MVC and EF, but i have a group of models that represent lookup tables that all have the same structure

public int ID {get; set;}
public string Value {get; set;}
public bool IsActive {get; set;}

Rather than writing one Controller and View for each is there a way to create one, that is defined by a previous selected value.

So if 2 of my lookups are Gender and Status and a dropdown with these values can I then take the name of the selected option and then dynamically bind to the model

so rather than having Status status = new Status its Object object = new Object where object has been defined by the selection of Status in the previous dropdown

Answer 1

It is definitely possible. There are several ways you could achieve this. You could have an EditorTemplate with everything you need to display your dropdown. In ~/Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/DropDown.cshtml

@model string
@{
    Layout = null;
    List<SelectListItem> ListItems = (List<SelectListItem>)ViewBag.ListItems;
}
// not sure what the syntax for a dropdown is, I don't use them
@Html.SelectFor(m => Model, ListItems)

Then in your view

@Html.EditorFor(m => m.Status, "DropDown", new { ListItems = MyModel.StatusSelectListItems })
@Html.EditorFor(m => m.Gender, "DropDown", new { ListItems = MyModel.GenderSelectListItems })

Where in your model you would have the selection options:

public class MyModel
{
    // other stuff
    public static List<SelectListItem> GenderSelectListItems = new List<SelectListItem> 
    { 
        new SelectListItem{ Value = "Male", Text = "Male" },
        new SelectListItem{ Value = "Female", Text = "Female" }
    };
    // etc
}