Dynamic view of anonymous type missing member issue - MVC3

Question

I have an MVC3 site that I\'ve setup for testing another site - most of it has been quick and dirty, and so I\'ve not gone to town creating model and view model types for all th

Answer 1

Obviously a 'proper' model type would solve the issue - but let's say I simply don't want to do that because that's my prerogative(!)

You cannot have such prerogative. Sorry, there is absolutely no excuse for this :-) Not to mention that what you are trying to achieve is impossible because dynamic types are internal to the declaring assembly. Razor views are compiled into a separate dynamic assembly at runtime by the ASP.NET engine.

So back to the topic: never pass anonymous objects as models to views. Always define use view models. Like this:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public int Value { get; set; }
}

and then:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    var model = Enumerable.Range(1, 10).Select(i => new MyViewModel { Value = i });
    return View(model);
}

and then use a strongly typed view:

@model IEnumerable
@Html.DisplayForModel()

and inside the corresponding display template which will automatically be rendered for each element of the collection so that you don't have to write any loops in your views (~/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/MyViewModel.cshtml):

@model MyViewModel
@:Number: @Html.DisplayFor(x => x.Value)

Things that we have improved from the initial version:

• We have strongly typed views with Intellisense (and if you activate compilation for views even compile time safety)
• Usage of strongly typed view models adapted to the specific requirements of your views.
• Getting rid of ViewBag/ViewData which imply weak typing
• Usage of display templates which avoid you writing ugly loops in your views => you rely on conventions and the framework does the rest