ASP.net MVC - Display Template for a collection

Question

I have the following model in MVC:

public class ParentModel
{
    public string Property1 { get; set; }
    public string Property2 { get; set; }

    public         


        

Answer 1

The actual "valid answer" is -IMHO- not correctly answering the question. I think the OP is searching for a way to have a list template that triggers without specifying the UIHint.

Magic stuff almost does the job

Some magic loads the correct view for a specified type.
Some more magic loads the same view for a collection of a specified type.
There should be some magic that iterates the same view for a collection of a specified type.

Change the actual behavior?

Open your favorite disassembler. The magic occurs in System.Web.Mvc.Html.TemplateHelpers.ExecuteTemplate. As you can see, there are no extensibility points to change the behavior. Maybe a pull request to MVC can help...

Go with the actual magic

I came up with something that works. Create a display template ~/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/MyModel.cshtml.

Declare the model as type object.

If the object is a collection, iterate and render the template again. If it's not a collection, then show the object.

@model object

@if (Model is IList)
{
    var models = (IList)Model;

    @foreach (var item in models)
    {
@Html.Partial("DisplayTemplates/MyModel", item)
    }

} else {
    var item = (MyModel)Model;
    
@item.Name
    }
}

Now DisplayFor works without UIHint.