MVC 4 - Many-to-Many relation and checkboxes

Question

I\'m working with ASP.NET MVC 4 and Entity Framework. In my database, I have a table Subscription which represents a subscription to public transports. This

Answer 1

Just an extension to Slauma's answer. In my case i had to represent many-to-many like a table between Products and Roles, first column representing Products, the header representing Roles and the table to be filled with checkboxes to select roles for product. To achieve this i have used ViewModel like Slauma described, but added another model containing the last two, like so:

public class UserViewModel
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable Products { get; set; }
}

public class ProductViewModel
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable Roles { get; set; } 
}
public class RoleViewModel
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public bool IsSelected { get; set; }
}

Next, in Controller we need to fill data:

UserViewModel user = new UserViewModel();
user.Name = "Me";
user.Products = new List
                {
                    new ProductViewModel
                    {
                        Id = 1,
                        Name = "Prod1",
                        Roles = new List
                        {
                            new RoleViewModel
                            {
                                Id = 1,
                                Name = "Role1",
                                IsSelected = false
                            }
                            // add more roles
                        }
                    }
                    // add more products with the same roles as Prod1 has
                 };

Next, in View:

@model UserViewModel@using (Ajax.BeginForm("Create", "User",
new AjaxOptions
{
    HttpMethod = "POST",
    InsertionMode = InsertionMode.Replace,
    UpdateTargetId = "divContainer"
}))
{

            @foreach (RoleViewModel role in Model.Products.First().Roles.ToList())
            {
                
            }
        
        @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Products)
    

    

        

            

            

                    @role.Name
                
    
    



}

As you see, EditorFor is using template for Products:

@model Insurance.Admin.Models.ProductViewModel
@Html.HiddenFor(model => model.Id)

    
        @Model.Name
    
    @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Roles)

This template uses another template for Roles:

@model Insurance.Admin.Models.RoleViewModel
@Html.HiddenFor(model => model.Id)

    @Html.EditorFor(model => model.IsSelected)

And voila, we have a table containing first column Products, the header contains Roles and the table is filled with checkboxes. We are posting UserViewModel and you will see that all the data are posted.