How to display total course credits for enrolled students in a table column?

Courses
1 
Hey everyone, I'm working on updating a Contoso University app and I'm stuck. I need to show the total credits for all courses a student has signed up for in the Credits column of my student table. Here's what I've got so far:

- The table displays student info like name, enrollment date, and courses
- The Credits column is currently empty
- I use a loop to display each student's data

I'm not sure how to calculate and display the total credits. Should I adjust my model, or is there a way to handle this purely in the view?

Any help would be appreciated! Let me know if you need more details about my setup.
2

Hey Liam39! That’s a pretty cool project you’re working on there. :mortar_board:

I’m curious about a few things that might help us figure this out:

  1. Are you using Entity Framework or another ORM?
  2. Do you have a separate Course model with a Credits property?
  3. Is there a many-to-many relationship between Students and Courses?

If you’re using EF, you might be able to do something like this in your view:

@foreach (var student in Model)
{
    <tr>
        <!-- other columns -->
        <td>@student.Enrollments.Sum(e => e.Course.Credits)</td>
    </tr>
}

This assumes you have navigation properties set up correctly. But without knowing more about your data structure, it’s hard to say for sure.

Have you considered creating a view model that includes the total credits? That could be a clean way to handle this without complicating your view logic too much.

Let me know more about your setup and we can brainstorm some solutions!

3

I’ve encountered a similar issue in my projects before. One effective approach is to create a view model that includes a TotalCredits property. This way, you can calculate the total credits in your controller before passing the data to the view.

In your controller, you could do something like this:

var viewModel = _context.Students
    .Select(s => new StudentViewModel
    {
        // Other properties...
        TotalCredits = s.Enrollments.Sum(e => e.Course.Credits)
    })
    .ToList();

Then in your view, you can simply display the TotalCredits property in the Credits column. This keeps your view clean and moves the calculation logic to where it belongs - in the controller.

Remember to update your view to use the new view model instead of the original Student model. This approach is generally more maintainable and easier to test.

4

yo liam, i’ve had this issue b4. quick fix: add a property to ur student model like TotalCredits. then in the controller, do smthin like:

student.TotalCredits = student.Enrollments.Sum(e => e.Course.Credits);

then just show TotalCredits in ur view. ez pz!