Mapping with automapper - asp.net-mvc

Question

I have a domain model:
public class Project
{
[Key]
public int ProjectID { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Slug { get; set; }
public string Content { get; set; }
public string Category { get; set; }
public string Client { get; set; }
public int Year { get; set; }
}
I have a view model (which is a portion of the above model):
public class ListProjectsViewModel
{
public IEnumerable<ProjectStuff> SomeProjects { get; set; }
public class ProjectStuff
{
public int ProjectID { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Slug { get; set; }
public string Content { get; set; }
}
// Some other stuff will come here
}
I have an action controller:
public ActionResult List()
{
// Get a list of projects of type IEnumerable<Project>
var model = m_ProjectBusiness.GetProjects();
// Prepare a view model from the above domain entity
var viewModel = Mapper.Map..........
return View(viewModel);
}
How can I code the mapping '........' with automapper ?
Thanks.

Answer 1

There are two steps.
1) Define a mapping with AutoMapper (this is usually done in some sort of bootstrapper called by Global.asax, etc.)
// since all of your properties in Project match the names of the properties
// in ProjectStuff you don't have to do anything else here
Mapper.CreateMap<Project, ListProjectsViewModel.ProjectStuff>();
2) Map the object in your controller:
// Get a list of projects of type IEnumerable<Project>
var projects = m_ProjectBusiness.GetProjects();
// Prepare a view model from the above domain entity
var viewModel = new ListProjectsViewModel
{
SomeProjects = Mapper.Map<IEnumerable<Project>, IEnumerable<ListProjectsViewModel.ProjectStuff>>(projects)
};
return View(viewModel);
The thing to note here is that you are defining a mapping between Project and ProjectStuff. What you are trying to map is a list of Projects (IEnumerable) to a list of ProjectStuff (IEnumerable). AutoMapper can do this automatically by putting that in the generic arguments as I did above. Your View Model that your view is using is wrapping your list of ProjectStuff, so I just create a new ListProjectsViewModel and do the mapping inside of that.