ASP.Net Model without DbContext?

Question

I am new to ASP.Net, if my question sounds very basic, please be polite.

I have created a ASP.Net MVC4 project. A page in the application will display names of the files in tabular form.

The names of the files are obtained by finding files in a particular folder on the server. So there is no need for me to have a database for model.

When user opens the page, the server side code will list all the files in the directory and should return a list of Strings.

I am following ASP.Net MVC tutorial here and it appears I have to have a DBContext class and also a database. In my case that's not needed

So that question is can I add my model without having to add code like below and still be able to use the feature of model ? any simple example would be great.

 public class MovieDBContext : DbContext 
 {
  public DbSet<Movie> Movies { get; set; } 
 }

David · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-26 16:33:00Z

Any class can serve as a model in this case. For example, if you just want to have a Movie model, you can have something as simple as this:

public class Movie
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
}

A view can bind to that model, to an enumeration of that model, etc.

For fetching your data from the file system, one approach could be a simple factory method on that model. Maybe something like this:

public class Movie
{
    public string Title { get; set; }

    public static IEnumerable<Movie> GetMovies()
    {
        // get the list of movies from the file system, for example as a list of strings
        var movies = SomeFileSystemInteraction();
        return movies.Select(m => new Movie { Title = m });
    }
}

Then in your controller you can get the list of movies to bind to the view:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    return View(Movie.GetMovies());
}

There's no need for a database, it's just used in tutorials because it's the most common case. But you can bind your views to any object you'd like.

Shyju · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-26 16:38:28Z

You do not need that MovieDBContext class if you are not dealing with database. But having a model is a good idea to represent your entity(in this case the Folder). It is just a POCO class.

public class Folder
{
  public string Name { set;get;}
  public int NumberOfchilds { set;get;}
  //Other properties as needed.
}

Now you can use the Model class to pass data between differnt places. For example. You can move the code which reads the data from file system to a Service class method and the method can return a list of this class/A single instance of this class as needed. Your controller action method can call the service method.

public class FolderService
{
  public Folder GetRecentlyCreatedFolder()
  { 
     var folder=new Folder();
     //Set the properties of this object
     // folder.Name="MySecret";
     return folder; 
  }
}

and in your Action method

public ActionResult Items()
{
  var srv=new FolderService();
  var recentFolder=srv.GetRecentlyCreatedFolder();
  return View(recentFolder);
}

Tetsujin no Oni · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-26 16:31:04Z

0

Yes, you can use a model which is not stored in a database at all. Your case sounds like an obvious example.

Model, View, Controller makes database access easily abstractable but doesn't necessitate a database.

answered Nov 26, 2013 at 16:31

Tetsujin no Oni

7,3652 gold badges31 silver badges46 bronze badges

Comments

Kelly Robins · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-26 16:33:18Z

0

As much as I like entity framework I've never loved how most tutorials for MVC seem to marry the two - They are essentially unrelated and I think it really muddies the waters for a lot of programmers new to the framework.

All you need for a model is just a plain old class. Instead of using the dbcontext you'd simply use whatever code you need to load your data.

answered Nov 26, 2013 at 16:33

Kelly Robins

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