Partial view using a different table to that of the main view

Question

I'm trying to add a dropdown list to my Hotel view - index.cshtml. The hotel controller for this view gets the Hotel object:

private HotelEntities db = new HotelEntities();

   public ViewResult Index()
    {
        var hotels = db.Hotels.Include("Address");
        return View(hotels.ToList());
    }

I want to display a list of hotels in this view. But before showing this list, I want the user to be able to search which country they want to view hotels for. The dropdownlist is a list of countries in my database. I have an object for it in my entity model - HotelEntities. I have created a partial country view in the shared folder with the dropdownlist and a country controller for it that gets the list of countries:

 public class CountryController : Controller
   {
    private HotelEntities db = new HotelEntities();
    //
    // GET: /Country/

    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        var country = db.Countries.ToList();
        return View(country.ToList());
    }

}

In the partial view I have :

@model IEnumerable <MvcApp20Aug.Models.Country>


           @foreach (var item in Model)
           {
             @Html.DropDownListFor(model => item.CountryId, new SelectList(item.CountryIso, item.CountryName));

           }

and finally i added the partial view into my hotels index.cshtml:

@model IEnumerable<MvcHotelApp.Models.Hotel>

@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Index";
}

<h2>Index </h2> 
@{Html.RenderPartial("Country");}
<p>

I get the error : The model item passed into the dictionary is of type 'System.Collections.Generic.List`1[MvcHotelApp.Models.Hotel]', but this dictionary requires a model item of type 'MvcHotelApp.Models.Country'.

So I don't understand how to use a different table in my partial view to my main view. Can anyone explain why not and how i should approach this.

Answer 1

call it like ,

         @{Html.RenderAction("Index","Country");}

and change you country partialview like this,

       @model IEnumerable <MvcApp20Aug.Models.Country>
         @Html.DropDownListFor("CountryId", new SelectList(Model.CountryIso, Model.CountryName));