Bdtjtk

I'm on a .NET platform, writing an MVC application for registering attendances of Departments' Chiefs and their staff. Each of them will log into the webpage, will have a list of some people in their staff shown, then they shall check some checkboxes and select some elements from dropdownlists, and all need to be posted back to the server.

First, I have the Entities:

public class Attendance

{

    public DateTime Date { get; set; }

    public Chief Appointed { get; set; }

    public bool Present { get; set; }

    public LeaveType Leave { get; set; }

    public Chief Deputy { get; set; }

}



public class Department

{

    public string Name { get; set; }

    public int ID { get; set; }

    public Chief Head { get; set; }

    public Department Parent { get; set; }

    public List<Department> Children { get; set; }

}

These entities, stored in a SQL Server database, make up a repository so that when anyone logs into the web page, the Controller populates the ViewModel with a list of people in their staff only.

This filtered repository is wrapped up in the ViewModel that, for other reasons, has a constructor method:

public class ViewModel

{

    public List<Attendance> Attendances { get; set; }

    public List<Department> Departments { get; set; }



    public ViewModel()

    {

        // some code

    }

}      

This is (part of) the View code - important note: I'm using this boostrap-switch javascript library for turning checkboxes into switches, so I can't rely on helper methods for the input elements.

@model ViewModel



@using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Attendances", FormMethod.Post))

{

    foreach (Department department in Model.Departments)

    {

        <script type="text/javascript">

            $(document).ready(function () {

                $("[id='@department.ID']").bootstrapSwitch()

            });

        </script>



        <div>

            <div>

                @department.Name

            </div>

        </div>

        <div>

            <div>

                @department.Head

            </div>

            <div>

                <input type="checkbox" id="@department.ID" name="Department.ID" checked />

            </div>

        </div>

    }



    <input type="submit" value="Submit"/>

}

Now, this is where I have problems: in the controller, I have this POST method that create a new instance of the ViewModel every time is called.

[HttpPost]

public ActionResult Index(ViewModel viewModel)

{

    // Register the submitted data



    return View(viewModel);

}

How do I tell the code to take the collection submitted by the user into the new (empty) collection created by the controller when the user clicks on the submit button?

Thanks, Davide.