MVC 3 (C#, ASP.NET 4) Child records page - help needed with example

I forgot to mention;

the model already has defined the EntityCollection/navigation/relationshipmanager/getrelatedcollction stuff related to the child/detail tables- which came from the Model Designer and db relationships - this was *not* CodeFirst....

for instance;

        #region Navigation Properties
   
        /// <summary>
        /// No Metadata Documentation available.
        /// </summary>
        [XmlIgnoreAttribute()]
        [SoapIgnoreAttribute()]
        [DataMemberAttribute()]
        [EdmRelationshipNavigationPropertyAttribute("UGOPSModel", "FK_BargeDetail_Shift", "BargeDetail")]
        public EntityCollection<BargeDetail> BargeDetails
        {
            get
            {
                return ((IEntityWithRelationships)this).RelationshipManager.GetRelatedCollection<BargeDetail>("UGOPSModel.FK_BargeDetail_Shift", "BargeDetail");
            }
            set
            {
                if ((value != null))
                {
                    ((IEntityWithRelationships)this).RelationshipManager.InitializeRelatedCollection<BargeDetail>("UGOPSModel.FK_BargeDetail_Shift", "BargeDetail", value);
                }
            }
        }

Let me start by saying that I am trying to learn about MVC 3, since it is a little different than MVC 2.

Are you using Razor or ASP.NET views?

Parent Child List in MVC3 Razor
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9341711/parent-child-list-in-mvc3-razor

@model IEnumerable<Product>
<ul>
    @foreach (var child in Model)
    {
        <li>
            @Html.DisplayFor(m => child.Name)
            @Html.Action("DisplayChildren", "ControllerName", 
                new { parentId = child.Id })
        </li>
    }
</ul>

Select allOpen in new window

>> I just want to add an action on the master/parent records view, to open/jump to a <filtered?> child/detail view page.

This requires State, because the action depends upon the state (model) of the previous action. The way to do this is to either store in session the parent model and execute second action on say ChildController. The action would fetch the stored parent from session. Of course, using session is a decision that affects scalability of applications and for this simple learning task I suggest that you try it that way.

Another solution is to pass the parent's id to child action (store it as part of the url for action on main page). The child controller can re-fetch the parent object or perhaps just fetch collection of objects for given parent id. The downside is an additional DB hit.

Another interesting solution (which may not make sense in all cases) would be to store the json form of object on the client side will relationships eagerly loaded. Then for just child display, you can work entirely with Js and client end html.

:Abience;

Seriously?
It's this difficult ?

What application does NOT require the editing of child/detail records ?

How else could you possibly drill down into detail records ?

I just find it so hard to believe this requires any special handling and/or difficult to locate a "best practices" approach to doing so.

"The main issue here is that it requires two HTTP request

1) fetch parent and display an edit link
2) open a page filled with children from previous request"

----------------------------------------------

Thank you for the explanation -
this is what I am having a hard time finding an easy example of.


I found a project on MS asp.net MVC tutorial site - and it gives code-first examples of DISPLAYING a list of child records, so that's a good starting point, but it has no explanation - only code.

So I am trying to matchup the difference between the code-first examples and my non-code-first model and the different way of coding things...