I prefer not to use the Umbraco Modelsbuilder and instead create my own view models and controllers.

I've followed the route hijacking and custom controller and view model documentation.

Perhaps I've misunderstood, but I thought doing something like this in my controller would map the CurrentPage properties to my custom model.

var homepageViewModel = new Homepage(CurrentPage, new PublishedValueFallback(_serviceContext, _variationContextAccessor));

I can see within CurrentPage that my property has a value from the CMS, but it doesn't get mapped to the homepageViewModel, and I don't want to manually map them.

Here's my simplified example:

HomepageController.cs

public class HomepageController : RenderController
{
    private readonly IVariationContextAccessor _variationContextAccessor;
    private readonly ServiceContext _serviceContext;

    public HomepageController(ILogger<HomepageController> logger, ICompositeViewEngine compositeViewEngine, IUmbracoContextAccessor umbracoContextAccessor, IVariationContextAccessor variationContextAccessor, ServiceContext context)
        : base(logger, compositeViewEngine, umbracoContextAccessor)
    {
        _variationContextAccessor = variationContextAccessor;
        _serviceContext = context;
    }

    public  IActionResult Homepage()
    {
        // you are in control here!
        var homepageViewModel = new Homepage(CurrentPage, new PublishedValueFallback(_serviceContext, _variationContextAccessor));
        // return a 'model' to the selected template/view for this page.
        return CurrentTemplate(homepageViewModel);
    }
}

HomepageViewModel.cs

public class HomepageViewModel : PublishedContentModel
{

    private IPublishedValueFallback _publishedValueFallback;

    // ctor
    public HomepageViewModel(IPublishedContent content, IPublishedValueFallback publishedValueFallback)
        : base(content, publishedValueFallback)
    {
        _publishedValueFallback = publishedValueFallback;
    }

    public string Headline { get; set; }
}

Homepage.cshtml

@using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models

@inherits Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common.Views.UmbracoViewPage<HomepageViewModel> 
@Model.Headline

The view model HomepageViewModel returned to the page has a null value for Heading, but I can see it in the CurrentPage / Properties / Heading / Non-public Members / _sourceValue which contains the published value from the CMS.

If I have to use a custom mapper so be it, but I can't see the value in creating a model and putting in the CurrentPage as a parameter if its not going to map it.

Any help would be much appreciated :)