Task 2: Adding Employers

ViewModels

1. Create a new ViewModel called AddEmployerViewModel that has 2 properties: Name and Location. For this application, an employer can only have one location.
2. Add validation to both properties in the ViewModel so that both properties are required. The depth of your validation is up to you.
3. This class does not need a constructor.

Controllers

EmployerController contains four relatively empty action methods. Take the following steps to handle traffic between the views and the model:

1. Set up a private JobDbContext variable so you can perform CRUD operations on the database. Pass it into a EmployerController constructor.
2. Complete Index() so that it passes all of the Employer objects in the database to the view.
3. Create an instance of AddEmployerViewModel inside of the Add() method and pass the instance into the View() return method.
4. Add the appropriate code to ProcessAddEmployerForm() so that it will process form submissions and make sure that only valid Employer objects are being saved to the database.
   1. You want to add a new employer if the model is valid.
   2. Else redirect users back to the form
5. About() takes an id as a parameter. It will create an Employer object by searching through the Employers table in DbContext until it finds the provided id. It will pass the employer object to the view.
   1. Consider using the .Find() method to search the database.

Views

The starter code comes with 3 views in the Employer subdirectory. Read through the code in each view. You may have to add models or make sure naming is consistent between the controller and the view. Make sure you are using your new AddEmployerViewModel and its validation where necessary.

1. About View: Use the Model to help populate the view
2. Add View: Use tag helpers to use the AddEmployerViewModel’s validation
3. Index View: Create a way to add a new employer on this View.

Model

We need to create a List of Job objects named Jobs in the Employer model. Make sure it has both a getter and a setter.

Adding a Job

One important feature of your application is a form to add a new job. Two action methods in JobController, Add() and ProcessAddJobForm(), will work together to return the view that contains the form and handle form submission. In the Job subdirectory in Views, you will find an Add.cshtml file which contains the beginning of the form. Right now, the form only has one field for the job’s name. As you work on the application, you will add more fields to this form to add employer and skill info.

1. Create a new ViewModel called AddJobViewModel. You will need properties for the job’s name, the selected employer’s ID, and a list of all employers as SelectListItem. Make sure that the name of a job is required.

   Note

   This is different from the given ViewModel, JobDetailViewModel. JobDetailViewModel has properties for the selected employer’s info and the selected skill’s info. AddJobViewModel will have properties for all of the employers and skills in the database once you complete task 3. We need both ViewModels for the application.

2. Back in the JobController, find the Add() method.

   1. This method needs to contain a list of Employer objects which it pulls from the Employers dbContext.
   2. This method needs to create an instance of the AddJobViewModel which is passed the list of employer objects.
   3. Pass an instance of AddJobViewModel to the view.

3. In Add.cshtml view, add a new <div class="form-group"> element to the form. Add the appropriate <label> and <input> tags to the new <div> element to create the form field to add employer information to the job. This field should be a dropdown menu with all of the employers in the database. In addition, add a link to the <div> element to add new employers. This way, if a user doesn’t see the employer they are looking for, they can easily click on the link and add a new employer to the database.

4. Back in the JobController, rename ProcessAddJobForm() to Add() and add the [HttpPost] attribute to designate this as your post handler.

   1. This post handler needs to take in an instance of AddJobViewModel and make sure that any validation conditions you want to add are met before creating a new Job object and saving it to the database.
   2. If model is valid, redirect to the “/Jobs”.

Create the One-to-Many Relationship

In the JobDbContext, we need to add the following to the OnModelCreating() method:

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modelBuilder.Entity<Job>()
   .HasOne(p => p.Employer)
   .WithMany(b => b.Jobs);

This will create the many-to-one relationship between Jobs and Employers.

Test It with SQL

Before you move on, try out your application now to make sure it runs as expected. You should be able to create Employer objects and view them both in the browser and in your database.

1. Open MySQL Workbench and make sure you have an Employers table and that it is empty.
2. Start up your application – don’t forget to have your SQL server running – and go to the Add Jobs view.
3. You won’t be able to add a job yet, but you’ll see a link to Add Employers in the form. Click on it and proceed to check the functionality of the form that follows.
4. Be sure to test your validation requirements and error handling.

SQL Task 2

In queries.sql under “Task 2”, write a query to list the names of the employers in St. Louis City.

You are ready to move onto Task 3 .