Howto use MvcContrib.Pagination with a ViewModel

I was looking for a simple solution for paging in a ASP.MVC2 project. Though we already use MVCContrib.Grid this was the first place I searched.

The solution MVCContrib offers is elegant in the way that they separated the concept of paging, a ui element to show paging (next , previous, …) and a grid to show the content. This separation allows us to using paging on a custom table based page as well.

Because we are using ViewModels a little extra effort was needed to retain the paging information from the domain layer in the view layer.

Step by step:

* Get a Querable from repository using Domain Objects

IQueryable<DomainObject> domainObjects = rep.GetAll()

* Filter and Sort using Linq

domainObjects = domainObjects.Where(...).OrderBy(...)

* Get the data

IPagination<DomainObject> pageOfData domainObjects.AsPagination( page, pageSize)

* Map to the ViewModel

IPagination<DomainObjectViewModel> model = DomainObjectViewModel.Map( pageOfData )

* Mapping needs to retain the page information from the domain

var list = new List<DomainObjectViewModel>();
foreach (var domainObject in domainObjects)
{
list.Add(Map(domainObject));
}
new CustomPagination<DomainObjectViewModel>(list.AsEnumerable(),
    pageOfData.PageNumber, 
    pageOfData.PageSize, 
    pageOfData.TotalItems);

* Show the information on a page in a grid

<%= Html.Grid(Model).AutoGenerateColumns() %>

* Show the pager

<%= Html.Pager(Model).First( "<<").Last(">>").Next(">").Previous("<")
.Format( "Item {0} - {1} van {2} ") %>