ASP MVC2 - Dynamic Field Layout

Question

I'm new to MVC and ADO.net Entity Framework. Instead of having to create an edit/display for each entity, I'd like to have the controller base class generate the view and validation code based off metadata stored in a table - something along those lines.

I would imagine something like this has already been done, or there are good reasons for not doing it. Any insight or suggestions are appreciated.

Answer 1

The display can be done using Html.DisplayForModel() or Html.EditorForModel(). This generates a view for the entity to render, but it probably won't look the way you like. I think it might inject validators, but that is based of data annotations, not the LINQ to Entity DB metadata.

As far as I know, I don't know of anything that automatically sucks in L2E model metadata... I was thinking of writing something myself too, as it would be very convenient to have.

HTH.

Answer 2

I don't like to answer my own question, but I found a library - [ASP.Net Dynamic Forms][1] - which was pretty much exactly what I needed.

It's pretty well written, isn't too complicated and easily extensible. The source author leaves the implementation very open ended, so far, I've been able to easily create a sql layer where the form settings reside, code looks something like this -

` string controllerName = controllerType.ToString();

        Form form = new Form();
        List<FormSetting> settings = new DataEntities().FormSettings.Where((c => c.ControllerName == controllerName)).ToList();

        foreach (FormSetting setting in settings)
        {
            Field fieldToAdd = CreateField(setting);
            form.Fields.Add(fieldToAdd);
        }`

[1]: http://mvcdynamicforms.codeplex.com/ .