ASP.Net Passing array from Controller to View to javascript

Question

I have ASP.Net MVC3 application. And My task is to read points from file and display them. For reading points from file I use DLL. I draw them in javascript. Here is my code:

// Controller
{
  IntPtr lib = LoadLibrary("lib.dll");

  // getting points from DLL. I get then as array of strings to serialise later
  string[] points = new string[0];
  GetArrayPointsAsStrings(points); // I get coordinates - [x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2, ..]

  FreeLibrary(lib);

  JavaScriptSerializer serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
  serializer.MaxJsonLength = Int32.MaxValue;
  string serialized_points = serializer.Serialize(points);

  return View(new MyModel(serialized_points));
}

// Model
public class MyModel
{
  public string Points { get; private set; }
}

// View
@{
var m = Model;
var array_of_strings_points = m.Points;
}

// object from javascript
var js_obj = new js_obj();
var points_string = '@Html.Raw(@array_of_strings_points)';
js_obj.DrawPoints(points_string);

//js
//.. and here in DrawPoints() I parse the string of points and draw point

My question is: Is it ok to pass all serialized points to string from controller to javascript this way? May be there is better way to pass all points to javascript?

Thanks, Zhenya

Answer 1

My question is: Is it ok to pass all serialized points to string from controller to javascript this way? May be there is better way to pass all points to javascript?

On your model keep the real CLR type (string[]). You don't need to be JSON serializing in your controller:

public class MyModel
{
    public string[] Points { get; set; }
}

then have your controller populate and pass the view model to the view:

string[] points = ...
MyModel model = new MyModel();
mode.Points = points;
return View(model);

and finally in your view:

@model MyModel
...

<script type="text/javascript">
    var js_obj = new js_obj();
    var points = @Html.Raw(Json.Encode(Model.Points));
    js_obj.DrawPoints(points);
</script>

Now if your js_obj.DrawPoints expects a JSON string as parameter instead of a javascript array of strings you could pass it like this:

@model MyModel
...

<script type="text/javascript">
    var js_obj = new js_obj();
    var points = @Html.Raw(Json.Encode(Model.Points));
    js_obj.DrawPoints(JSON.stringify(points));
</script>