I've got a ViewModel that takes some Model data and slightly alters it.
The way I'm doing it "works" since I just pass the DomainModel to the constructor for the ViewModel, but since I'm using AutoMapper on some of my one-to-one ViewModels, I thought I'd try and learn how to do the mapping across all ViewModels.
Here's an example of a ViewModel that does a little extra.
public class UsersDetailsViewModel
{
public string UserName { get; set; }
public string Email { get; set; }
public string Website { get; set; }
public int ID { get; set; }
public List<OpenID> OpenIds { get; set; }
public string UserAge { get; set; }
public string About { get; set; }
public string Slug { get; set; }
public System.DateTime LastSeen { get; set; }
public string Region { get; set; }
public string MemberSince { get; set; }
public string Reputation { get; set; }
public bool IsUserMatch { get; set; }
private readonly MarkdownDeep.Markdown _markdown;
public UsersDetailsViewModel(Domain.User user)
{
AuthUserData currentuser = AuthenticationHelper.RetrieveAuthUser;
_markdown.NoFollowLinks = true;
_markdown.SafeMode = true;
_markdown.ExtraMode = false;
_markdown.MarkdownInHtml = true;
// We want to ensure that the user has a username, even if they
// haven't set one yet. What this does is check to see if the
// user.UserName field is blank, and if it is, it will set the
// username to "UserNNNN" where NNNN is the user ID number.
_UserName = (user.UserName != null) ? user.UserName : "User" + user.ID.ToString;
// Nothing fancy going on here, we're just re-passing the object from
// the database to the View. No data manipulation!
_Email = user.Email;
_Website = user.WebSite;
_ID = user.ID;
// Get's a list of all of the user's OpenID's
_OpenIds = user.OpenIDs.ToList;
// Converts the users birthdate to an age representation
_UserAge = user.BirthDate.ToAge;
//IE: 29
// Because some people can be real ass holes and try to submit bad
// data (scripts and shitè) we have to modify the "About" content in
// order to sanitize it. At the same time, we transform the Markdown
// into valid HTML. The raw input is stored without sanitization in
// the database. this could mean Javascript injection, etc, so the
// output ALWAYS needs to be sanitized.
// This method below was used in conjunction with MarkDownSharp
// _About = Trim(Utilities.HtmlSanitizer.Sanitize(Markdown.Transform(user.About)))
_About = _markdown.Transform(user.About);
// Removes spaces from Usernames in order to properly display the
// username in the address bar
_Slug = Strings.Replace(user.UserName, " ", "-");
// Returns a boolean result if the current logged in user matches the
// details view of tBhe user in question. This is done so that we can
// show the edit button to logged in users.
_IsUserMatch = (currentuser.ID == user.ID);
// Grabs the users registration data and formats it to a <time> tag
// for use with the timeago jQuery plugin
_MemberSince = user.MemberSince;
// Grabs the users last activity and formats it to a <time> tag
// for use with the timeago jQuery plugin
_LastSeen = user.ActivityLogs.Reverse.FirstOrDefault.ActivityDate;
// Formats the users reputation to a comma Deliminated number
// IE: 19,000 or 123k
_Reputation = user.Reputation.ToShortHandNumber;
// Get the name of the users Default Region.
_Region = user.Region.Name.FirstOrDefault;
}
}
And here's how I currently utilize the above ViewModel
public ActionResult Details(int id)
{
User user = _userService.GetUserByID(id);
if (user != null) {
Domain.ViewModels.UsersDetailsViewModel userviewmodel = new Domain.ViewModels.UsersDetailsViewModel(user);
return View(userviewmodel);
} else {
// Because of RESTful URL's, some people will want to "hunt around"
// for other users by entering numbers into the address. We need to
// gracefully redirect them to a not found page if the user doesn't
// exist.
throw new ResourceNotFoundException();
}
}
How can I use (or should I use) AutoMapper to map my DomainModel to my ViewModel while doing the custom processing you see above?