MVC architecture - patterns

Question

I need some help with MVC architecture. I use the following architecture for an object named User.

UserRepository -> IUserRepository -> UserService -> IUserService -> UserController

The User object comes from my database and I'm using EntityFramework. I have a function that returns a list of users Return_All_Users(). One of the fields that gets returned is "UserType". This comes out as a number, but when I show the list in my Index.aspx page, I would like it to show as a string. The number for "UserType" needs to look into a Dictionary to find the string that goes along with the number like "Administrator" and I would like this string to show in my Index page.

How would I go about doing this? I'm currently using this function:

  public IEnumerable<User> Return_All_Users()
{
  //my code here
}

I had another post for a similar question, and it was suggested that my IEnumerable should return a string, not the User object. I tried that, but then I'm working with a Dynamic model and I didn't want to do that. Nor do I know how to work with a Dynamic model, so I thought maybe there is a better way of doing this.

Should this happen in my UserService? Maybe I need to create a new class called NewUser, and define the UserType as a string, then instantiate a new NewUser and pass the value from User. Before the UserType is passed, I would look in the dictionary and get the correct value for the key.

Should I do that, or is there a better way?

---

After I posted this question, I just thought of doing this with a stored procedure. Maybe use a stored procedure in my database to return the data, as opposed to looking up my data straight from my database table.

Answer 1

I would create a View Model UserView that was formatted to the representation of how your view would best use that data. You could perform the mapping from User to UserView within your Repository or Controller depending on where you prefer doing this kind of mapping.