Designing an MVC repository using ViewModels

Question

I want to create a repository class to separate out my data logic from my controllers. I am using a ViewModel to represent some data that will be filled with data from differen

Answer 1

I think you may have a misunderstanding of the view model and it's purpose. You don't need to create a view model for every entity in your database, as it seems you want to do; you just create a view model for each view you want to render. Hence the term "view model"--it organizes the data in the form of a model that your view can be strongly typed to.

You wouldn't, for example, want to create a separate view model for every entity returned by a GetAll(). In a simple scenario of displaying a gridview of all records you would probably just need a single viewmodel with one property:

    public class MyViewModel
    {     
       public List AllRecords {get;set;}
    }

You would populate this view model in the controller

public ActionResult SomeAction()
{
   var viewmodel = new MyViewModel{AllRecords = GetAll()};
   return View(viewModel);
}

Have a look at this blog post by Rachael Appel for a really concise discussion.