How to pass data from Controller to WebForm in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I am trying to learn ASP.NET MVC and ADO.NET. I am making a demo website in which there would be an admin panel. The admin would update the Daily Messages which will get reflected in the main homepage. I am using ASP.NET MVC. I have created the table in database as

create table DailyMsg
(
    Sno int primary key, 
    msg varchar(max)
);

This is my Daily Access Layer

public class DailyMsgs
{
    static string connectionString = @"data source = DELL\SQLEXPRESS01;initial catalog = amen; persist security info=True;Integrated Security = SSPI;";
    SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(connectionString);

    DailyMsg dm = new DailyMsg();

    public string ViewDailyMessage()
    {
        SqlCommand com = new SqlCommand("sp_viewDsilyMSg", con);
        com.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
        con.Open();
        string simpleValue = com.ExecuteScalar().ToString();
       
        con.Close();
        return simpleValue;
    }
}

My model class:

public partial class DailyMsg
{
    public int Sno { get; set; }
    public string msg { get; set; }
}

Now, I am stuck at this step. I don't know how to place this returned value simpleValue to the <h2> tag of my view.

My controller

DailyMsgs dailyMsgs = new DailyMsgs();

private amenEntities db = new amenEntities();

// GET: DailyMsgs
public ActionResult Index()
{
    return View();
}

My home page:

@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Index";
}

<h2>Index</h2>

Answer 1

Don't use webforms with MVC, use views instead.

1. Create a view called Index.cshtml in the Views/Home directory. Or use the easy way - just right-click the Index() action in the controller and select Add View...

2. At the top of the Index view add

   @model @<YourProjectName>.<Models>.DailyMsg
   

   and replace <YourProjectName>.<Models> with the actual namespace where DailyMsg class resides

3. Currently, dailyMsgs.ViewDailyMessage() returns a string. You'll need to convert it to your model:

   // GET: DailyMsgs
   public ActionResult Index()
   {
       DailyMsg dailyMsg = new DailyMsg();
       // here I'm assuming your stored proc returns the daily message without the id
       // you should update ViewDailyMessage() to return a DailyMsg
       dailyMsg.msg = dailyMsgs.ViewDailyMessage();
       return View(dailyMsg);
   }
   

4. Add the html:

   <div>
       @Model.msg
   </div>
   

The text should be displayed inside the div.

Ideally, you should update ViewDailyMessage() in the data layer to return your DailyMsg model rather than a string.

---

Additionally, please consider renaming your classes and methods as they are currently poorly named and confusing. Your data layer DailyMsgs and model DailyMsg have very similar names and perform completely different functions.

Give them appropriate names. I'd suggest renaming as follows:

// data layer
// DailyMsgs (rename) -> MessageDataProvider
public class MessageDataProvider
{
    // rename ViewDailyMessage -> GetDailyMessage
    public DailyMessageModel GetDailyMessage()
    {
    }
}

// model
// DailyMsg (rename) -> DailyMessageModel
public partial class DailyMessageModel
{
}

This way you can see the responsibility of each class just from the name (one is data layer, the other is a model).