MVC3 – ViewModels and controller functionalty: sug

Question

I have built a simple MVC3-based ticket entry site for a less-than-usable call center application and am attempting to refactor my prototype to better adhere to design patterns partly to make it more maintainable going forward but mostly as a learning exercise. The user-facing view is a form consisting of basic user information in addition to a few panels allowing selection of various resource types. Each resource type (hardware, software, etc) is displayed in the same way: using dual, filterable listboxes with add/remove buttons, an optional “justification” textarea that conditionally displays if a requested resource requires justification, and general comments. I have built the following ViewModel for the individual panels:

public class RequestableList
{
    // list of requestable items ids requiring justification
    private List<string> _restrictedItems = new List<string>();
    public List<string> RestrictedItems
    {
        get { return _restrictedItems; }
        set { _restrictedItems = value; }
    }

    // the key-value pairs from which to populate available items list
    private Dictionary<string, string> _availableItems = new Dictionary<string, string>();
    public Dictionary<string, string> AvailableItems
    {
        get { return _availableItems; }
        set { _availableItems = value; }
    }

    // item ids requested by user
    private List<string> _requestedItems = new List<string>();
    public List<string> RequestedItems
    {
        get { return _requestedItems; }
        set { _requestedItems = value; }
    }
}

The main ViewModel is then comprised of multiple RequestableLists as necessary:

public class SimpleRequestViewModel
{
    public UserInfo userInfo { get; set; }
    public RequestableList Software {get;set;}
    public RequestableList Hardware {get;set;}
    public RequestableList Access {get;set;}
    public string SoftwareAdditionalInfo { get; set; }
    public string HardwareAdditionalInfo { get; set; }
    public string AccessFileMailShare { get; set; }
    public string AccessAdditionalInfo { get; set; }
    public string SoftwareJustification { get; set; }
    public string HardwareJustification { get; set; }
    public string AccessJustification { get; set; }
    public string Comment { get; set; }
}

I have created a strongly typed view for SimpleRequestViewModel (and its variant) and a strongly typed EditorTemplate for RequestableList that wires up the dual listboxes, filtering, and jquery. All renders well and is working but the code currently smells.

When posting to the controller, if the model is valid I must translate it into a readable text description in order to create a new ticket in in the call center app. It doesn’t feel right to have the controller performing that translation into readable text but I run into hurdles when trying to design another class to translate the viewmodels.

1. Only the selected item values are posted so before translating the request into text I must first lookup the appropriate text for the provided values (they are required in description). The controller is currently the only object that has access to the call center data model for this lookup query.
2. There are 2 similar ViewModels containing varying combinations of RequestableLists so any translator must be able to translate the various combinations. One has only Hardware and Software, another may have Hardware Software, and a few more RequestableLists.

I considered overriding ToString() directly in the ViewModel but didn’t like that business logic (conditional rendering) there, and again, once posted, the ViewModel doesn’t contain the text for the selected items in the listbox so it would need access to the data model. The translation of posted values to text as it is currently handled in the controller smells as it’s handled in a switch statement. The controller takes each posted RequestableList and populates the original “Available” fields before it builds the new ticket description.

switch (requestCategory)
{
    case RequestableCategory.Software:
        itemList = sde.GetSoftware();
        break;
    case RequestableCategory.Hardware:
        itemList = sde.GetHardware();
        break;
    case RequestableCategory.Access:
        itemList = sde.GetAccess();
        break;
    case RequestableCategory.Telecom:
        itemList = sde.GetTelecom();
        break;
    default:
        throw new ArgumentException();
}

So, my question(s):

1. What patterns are techniques would you recommend for performing the posted viewmodel to ticket description translation?
2. How do you typically handle the “only posts value” issue with select boxes when you need the text as well as the value?
3. Is there a better way for me to be approaching this problem?

Again, I am hoping this is a learning experience for me and am more than willing to provide additional information or description if needed.

Answer 1

A few suggestions:

1. Abstract the logic that does the call center submission into its own class. Provide (from the controller) whatever dependencies it needs to access the call center DB. Have different methods to handle the various types of view models using overloading. Presumably the descriptions come from the DB so you can extract the description from the DB based on the value in this class. This class could also take responsibility for building your view models for the display actions as well. Note that with this pattern the class can interact with the DB directly, through a repository, or even via web services/an API.

2. Use a repository pattern that implements some caching if performance is an issue in looking up the description from the DB the second time. I suspect it won't be unless your call center is very large, but that would be the place to optimize the query logic. The repository can be the thing that the controller passes to the submission class.

3. If you don't need to access the DB directly in the controller, consider passing the broker class as a dependency directly.

It might look like:

private ICallCenterBroker CallCenterBroker { get; set; }

public RequestController( ICallCenterBroker broker )
{
   this.CallCenterBroker = broker;
   // if not using DI, instantiate a new one
   // this.CallCenterBroker = broker ?? new CallCenterBroker( new CallCenterRepository() );
}

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult CreateSimple()
{
    var model = this.CallCenterBroker.CreateSimpleModel( this.User.Identity.Name );
    return View( model );
}


[HttpPost]
public ActionResult CreateSimple( SimpleRequestViewModel request )
{
    if (Model.IsValid)
    {
       var ticket = this.CallCenterBroker.CreateTicket( request );
       // do something with ticket, perhaps create a different model for display?
       this.CallCenterBroker.SubmitTicket( ticket );
       return RedirectToAction( "index" ); // list all requests?
    }
    return View();
}