Is it possible to use LabelFor for header row in Index view

Question

I am trying to leverage DataAnnotation values in ASP.NET MVC Index view. Interesting, code generator uses field names (eg., BlogPost) as opposed to Html.LabelFor(m =&g

Answer 1

You should, at the very least, be able to get what you want by using a partial view (ascx for WebForms) or a Display/Editor template. In your index page you can loop over your enumerable and pass the item into either a partial view or a template.

There may be a way to do it without having do as I've suggested (and I would be interested in seeing the answer), but what I've suggested should work fine.

EDIT:

After some clarification, here is my updated answer.

You can still get the label for a property while still respecting the DisplayAttribute in data annotations. I tried this real quick and it seems to work fine.

In my view I have the following:

Html.LabelFor(m => m.BlogPosts.First().BlogPostTitle)

This worked even if there were no items in the enumeration itself. When I first tested this I got the property name, then I added decorated the property with the DisplayAttribute and the value of the name property was displayed instead of the standard property name.

Answer 2

In MVC 4, the HtmlHelper extensions in the DisplayNameExtensions class allows the following (this is the default scaffolding of a list with column headings)

@model IEnumerable<Entity.Foo>

<table>
    <tr>
        <th>
            @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Bar)
        </th>
    </tr>

@foreach (var item in Model) {
    <tr>
        <td>
            @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Bar)
        </td>
...

This is because DisplayNameFor has overloads for both TModel and IEnumerable<TModel>:

    public static MvcHtmlString DisplayNameFor<TModel, TValue>
                       (this HtmlHelper<IEnumerable<TModel>> html, 
                        Expression<Func<TModel, TValue>> expression);
    public static MvcHtmlString DisplayNameFor<TModel, TValue>
                       (this HtmlHelper<TModel> html, 
                        Expression<Func<TModel, TValue>> expression);