Hi Richard,

The document type of News, is that a single item or does it contain a list of news items, for example within a container such as Nested Content?

The ModelsBuilder models will be in the Umbraco.Web.PublishedContentModels namespace. It should be easy enough to reference the models from your container.

Regards,

Tim

Hi Richard,

I sounds like you're getting there (or perhaps even totally sorted now).

You could use AutoMapper to sort out your casting between data types.

Take the following view model classes as an example:

    public class HomePageViewModel
    {
        public string SiteName { get; set; }
        public string Keywords { get; set; }

        public IEnumerable<NewsAreaViewModel> newsAreas { get; set; }        
    }

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

        public IEnumerable<NewsItemViewModel> NewsItems { get; set; }
    }

    public class NewsItemViewModel
    {
        public string Headline { get; set; }
        public string Body { get; set; }
        public DateTime DatePublished { get; set; }
    }

You can then define the object mappings somewhere in your startup code as follows:

Mapper.CreateMap<HomePage, HomePageViewModel>()
    .ForMember(dest => dest.newsAreas, opt => opt.MapFrom(src => src.Children().Where(x => x.DocumentTypeAlias == "newsArea")));
Mapper.CreateMap<NewsArea, NewsAreaViewModel>()
    .ForMember(dest => dest.NewsItems, opt => opt.MapFrom(src => src.Children().Where(x => x.DocumentTypeAlias == "newsItem")));
Mapper.CreateMap<NewsItem, NewsItemViewModel>();

And then in your controller, simply map from the HomePage to the HomePageViewModel:

HomePage content = model.Content as HomePage;
HomePageViewModel vm = Mapper.Map<HomePageViewModel>(content);

return View(vm);

All of this deals with strongly typed models throughout, either from ModelsBuilder, or the view models you define. As with most things, there are many different approaches available!

Regards,

Tim

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