In Umbraco, how can I bind a generic list of Objects to my View?

Something strange is happening in my umbraco project where I have a repository set up like so;

public class HireItemsRepo:BaseGenericRepository<YouHireItContext,HireItem>
{
   public List<HireItemViewModel> PopulateHireItemViewModel(RenderModel model)
    { List<HireItemViewModel> HireItems = new List<HireItemViewModel>();   
        foreach (var Hireitem in base.GetAll())
        {
            HireItems.Add(
              new HireItemViewModel(model.Content)
              {
                  Title = Hireitem.Title,
                  Price = Hireitem.Price
              }
           );
        }
        return HireItems;
    }

}

which I'm using in my controller like this

 public class HiresController : RenderMvcController
    {
        // GET: Hire
        public override ActionResult Index(RenderModel model)
        {

            HireItemsRepo repo = new HireItemsRepo();
            var VM = repo.PopulateHireItemViewModel(model);

                return View("Hires",VM.ToList());
        }
    }

And using that model in the view like this;

    @model List<You_Hire_It.Models.HireItemViewModel>

   /*HTML starts here*/

It's strange because if I try to use that model as a List, Umbraco will blow up with the following error;

Cannot bind source type System.Collections.Generic.List`1[[You_Hire_It.Models.HireItemViewModel, You_Hire_It, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null]] to model type Umbraco.Web.Models.RenderModel.

However, if I refactor all the code to use the model on it's own as if I only have one set of values to use, it has no problem with it!

Could anybody point me in the right direction with this please?

Many thanks in advance!

Solution

You can inherit from RenderModel as DZL suggests. However, I generally prefer to use route hijacking which would enable me to keep my models simple.

Instead of the Index method in your RenderMvcController, you can create a method with the same name as your view. I note your view is called Hires. So change your controller code to this:

public class HiresController : RenderMvcController
{
    // GET: Hire
    public ActionResult Hires(RenderModel model)
    {
        HireItemsRepo repo = new HireItemsRepo();
        var VM = repo.PopulateHireItemViewModel(model);

        return CurrentTemplate(VM)
    }
}

You now need to have your view inherit from UmbracoViewPage. So at the top of your view replace the @model line with the following:

@inherits UmbracoViewPage<List<HireItemViewModel>>

Your model in the view is now of type List<HireItemViewModel> which I think is what you want.

So to iterate the items you would use:

@foreach(var item in Model){
{
    // etc
}

Additionally, as this view now inherits from UmbracoViewPage, you have access to the UmbracoContext - just use @Umbraco

For example:

@Umbraco.TypedContentAtRoot().Where(x=>x.DocumentTypeAlias == "HomePage")

@Umbraco.AssignedContentItem etc