Btukfyl

I have this HTML page in an ASP .NET project, and I need to generate a pagination for a table of elements. Problem is, in the class architecture that's already in place, the only thing I can have for my model is an IEnumerable of a view model. The ONLY thing I would need is to fetch an integer value from either my controller or the view it returns. From that integer, that would represent the number of buttons needed to generate the pagination, I would create it, see HTML.

My controller generates the list of items and returns in the model it by doing a SQL Request that selects a certain amount of item from a certain offset, depending on my URL's parameters.

Here's the HTML, and what the code-behind in the controller would look like:

@model  IEnumerable<ItemIndexViewModel>



<h2>@UiText.PageTitles.ITEM_LIST</h2>

<hr />

<div class="col-md-12">

    <div class="col-md-9">

        <table class="table" id="client-index">

            <thead>

                <tr>

                    <th class="green-table-head-1">

                        @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Name)

                    </th>

                    <th class="green-table-head-1">

                        @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Id)

                    </th>

                </tr>

            </thead>

            <tbody>

                @foreach (ItemViewModel item in Model)

                {

                    @*Here, I have my table of items being generated*@

                }

            </tbody>

        </table>

        <div id="pagination">

            <ul>

                @for (int i = 0; i < [I need my int right here]; i++)

                {

                    @*I will generate buttons here*@

                }

            </ul>

        </div>

    </div>

</div>

public virtual ActionResult Index()

{

    int ownerId = _httpContext.GetUserOwnerId();

    int amountPerPage = 0;

    int pageIndex = 0;



    Int32.TryParse(Request.QueryString["amountPerPage"], out amountPerPage);

    Int32.TryParse(Request.QueryString["pageIndex"], out pageIndex);



    if (amountPerPage <= 0)

    {

        amountPerPage = 10;

    }

    if (pageIndex <= 0)

    {

        pageIndex = 1;

    }



    List<Item> items = _itemRepository.GetByPage(pageIndex, amountPerPage).ToList();



    // Make view models from the list of items

    List<ItemIndexViewModel> itemIndexViewModels = Mapper.Map<List<ItemIndexViewModel>>(items);



    // Create the buttons for the HTML

    int totalAmount = _itemRepository.Count();

    int totalPages = (Int32)Math.Ceiling(Decimal.Divide(totalAmount, amountPerPage));



    // Set update the navigation trace

    SetTraceRoot(MVC.Item.Index(), MVC.Item.ActionNames.Index);



    return View(itemIndexViewModels.OrderBy(x => x.Name));

}

What would be a good way of generating a pagination? I'm looking for flexibility because this procedure will be implemented for more than one page and for more than one class of items. I've already tried a couple of things to no avail, like using a class to contain my list of view models and an integer for the number of pages needed to store them all.

You can use ViewBag or ViewData instance in controller action to provide paging value before returning view:

ViewBag.TotalPages = totalPages;

And pass its value to the for loop to generate pagination in view side:

@for (int i = 0; i < ViewBag.TotalPages; i++)

{

    @* generate paging buttons *@

}

Usually ViewBag properties don't require type cast for simple types (numeric & string values), but ensure that the value is assigned to avoid return null.