How to display a list of objects in an MVC View?

Question

I have a method that is returning a list of strings. I simply would like to display that list in a view as plain text.

Here's the list from the controller:

public class ServiceController : Controller
{

    public string Service()
    {
        //Some code..........
        List<string> Dates = new List<string>();
        foreach (var row in d.Rows)
        {
            Dates.Add(row[0]);
        }
        return Dates.ToString();
    }

    public ActionResult Service()
    {
        Service();
   }
}

And the view:

<table class="adminContent">
    <tr>
        <td>HEJ</td>
    </tr>
     <tr>
        <td>@Html.Action("Service", "Service")</td>
    </tr>
    </tr>
</table>

I figure I must do something in the view like a foreach loop and and reference the list using "@" but how?

Solution 1

Your action method Service should return a View. After this change the return type of your Service() method from string to List<string>

public List<string> Service()
{
    //Some code..........
    List<string> Dates = new List<string>();
    foreach (var row in d.Rows)
    {
        Dates.Add(row[0]);
    }
    return Dates;
}

public ActionResult GAStatistics()
{
    return View(Service());
}

After this reference the model in your View:

@model List<string>
@foreach (var element in Model)
{
    <p>@Html.DisplayFor(m => element)</p>
}

In my example the ActionResult looks like this:

public ActionResult List()
{
    List<string> Dates = new List<string>();
    for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
    {
        Dates.Add(String.Format("String{0}", i));
    }
    return View(Dates);
}

Which resulted in the output:

Solution 2

You can do it as follows in the view,

@foreach (var item in @Model)      
{      
     <li>@item.PropertName</li>  
}   

Comments

[WhoAmI]

Actually this makes alot of sense. Thanks! Btw is the for-loop really nessesary? I mean, lets say we don't know how manny items are in the list can i do a foreach loop instead so that there arent a max result? Alternatively this: for (int i = 0; i != 0; i++) { Dates.Add(String.Format("String{0}", i)); } return View(Dates);

[Marco]

The for loop in the controller is just for demo purposes to get some content in the List. Use whatever you like and whatever you need.

[WhoAmI]

Seems like i have a problem. I already have a model @model ServiceListModel Getting the error i can only have 1 model.

[Marco]

Completly right. But there was no view in your question, so nobody knew about it. On the other hand: You have one controller action per view. One controller returns one model.