Creating a MVC ViewModels for my data

Question

Im still new to this MVC thing so is my understanding correct in terms of MVC View Models. They are essentially models that will interact directly with the view, where as a

Answer 1

Generally, it's a good practice to use a viewmodel. There are several advantages of using them. I think much of the details for viewmodel, you can find on the internet and on stack overflow as well.
And thus let me give an example or a starting point
let's say we have a viewmodel;

public class CategoryViewModel
{
    [Key]
    public int CategoryId { get; set; }
    [Required(ErrorMessage="* required")]
    [Display(Name="Name")]
    public string CategoryName { get; set; }
    [Display(Name = "Description")]
    public string CategoryDescription { get; set; }
    public ICollection SubCategories { get; set; }
}

Now, if you wanna use this in your repository project. you can do something like this;

public List GetAllCategories()
{
    using (var db =new Entities())
    {
        var categoriesList = db .Categories
            .Select(c => new CategoryViewModel()
            {
                CategoryId = c.CategoryId,
                CategoryName = c.Name,
                CategoryDescription = c.Description
            });
        return categoriesList.ToList();
    };
 }

as, you can see. In case of viewmodel, you need to use the projections (as i have projected my entities to the viewmodel).
Now, in your controller, you can easily access them and pass it to the view itself;

ICategoryRepository _catRepo;
    public CategoryController(ICategoryRepository catRepo)
    {
        //note that i have also used the dependancy injection. so i'm skiping that
        _catRepo = catRepo;
    }
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        //ViewBag.CategoriesList = _catRepo.GetAllCategories();
           or
        return View(_catRepo.GetAllCategories());
    }

And now, your view should be of type CategoryViewModel (the strongly typed)

@model IEnumerable
@foreach (var item in Model)
{
    
@item.CategoryName
}

I hope this gives you a starting point. Let me know, if you need more from me :D