ASP .NET Comic Book Gallery project help!

The updated walkthrough really helped! The answer was starring me right in my face. I didn't think about taking the if(seriesToReturn != null) statement outside of the foreach loop because I thought seriesToReturn was already assigned the current series. Thank you so much! :)

Near the beginning of this step where you compared the GetComicBook method with the GetSeriesDetail method, the code for the GetComicBook method has Data.ComicBooksData as the loop source. It should be Data.ComicBooks like it originally was. Other than that, I don't have any further issues. Thanks!

Scott,

Thanks for letting me know about the misnamed property! I just fixed that error in the walkthrough :)

Thanks, James

I have rebuilt the ComicBookGallery solution and nothing changes. It still gives an exception that says: "The model item passed into the dictionary is of type 'ComicBookGallery.Models.Series', but this dictionary requires a model item of type 'ComicBookGallery.Models.ComicBook[]'." The property Issue is of type ComicBook[] but the model definition for the series detail view is of type Series., at least I think that's how you would describe it. I have tried changing the definition to ComicBookGallery.Models.ComicBook[] but that doesn't fix it.

If you're debugging, doesn't it show you exactly where this is happening? And before you make the click that causes the error, what does your browser show as the address where the link will go?

And are you sure your GitHub code is in sync with what you are building?

When I am on the page that lists all the series, hovering over the first link, which is The Amazing Spider-Man, the browser shows the address as "/Series/Detail/1".

The below code works when the partial isn't referenced.

@model ComicBookGallery.Models.Series

@{
    ViewBag.Title = Model.Title;
    ViewBag.ShowBackBar = true;
}

<h2>@ViewBag.Title</h2>

<div class="well">
    <h5>Description</h5>
    <div>
        <p>@Html.Raw(Model.DescriptionHtml)</p>
    </div>
</div>

<h4>Comic Books Available in This Series</h4>

@Html.Partial("_ComicBooksList", Model.Issues);

If the last line of code is left out, then I can get to the Detail page for both "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "Bone", but the pages won't show the comic books available in the series. The source for where the error is happening is is the Series/Detail.cshtml file and it is with the @Html.Partial(). I hope I am making sense.

I just checked and all of files are synced to GitHub. I have double and triple the walkthrough to see if I was missing something and I wasn't. I'm baffled too because I would think other people are having the same problem with this walkthrough but it seems like I am the only one.

public Series GetSeriesDetail(int id)
        {
            Series seriesToReturn = null;
            foreach (var series in Data.Series)
            {
                if (series.Id == id)
                {
                    seriesToReturn = series;
                    break;
                }
                if (seriesToReturn != null)
                {
                    var comicBooks = new ComicBook[0];
                    foreach (var comicBook in Data.ComicBooks)
                    {
                        if (comicBook.Series != null && comicBook.Series.Id == id)
                        {
                            Array.Resize(ref comicBooks, comicBooks.Length + 1);
                            comicBooks[comicBooks.Length - 1] = comicBook;
                        }
                    }
                    seriesToReturn.Issues = comicBooks;
                }
            }

            return seriesToReturn;
        }

As the instructor said, we're suppose to loop through the available comic books and check to see if the comic book has a series and its Id property equals our id argument value. When we find a matching comic book, we'll add it to a local array variable. When I was debugging and I clicked on "Bone", in the Autos window in Visual Stuido the Issues property had a value of null. Here is my code for the Series model:

 using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

namespace ComicBookGallery.Models
{
    public class Series
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public string Title { get; set; }
        public string DescriptionHtml { get; set; }
        public ComicBook[] Issues { get; set; }
    }
}

And the ComicBook model:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

namespace ComicBookGallery.Models
{
    public class ComicBook
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public Series Series { get; set; }
        public int IssueNumber { get; set; }
        public string DescriptionHtml { get; set; }
        public Artist[] Artists { get; set; }
        public bool Favorite { get; set; }

        public string DisplayText
        {
            get
            {
                var series = Series;
                if (series != null)
                {
                    return series.Title + " #" + IssueNumber;
                }
                else
                {
                    return null;
                }
            }
        }

        // series-title-issuenumber.jpg
        public string CoverImageFileName
        {
            get
            {
                var series = Series;
                if (series != null)
                {
                    return series.Title.Replace(" ", "-")
                    .ToLower() + "-" + IssueNumber + ".jpg";
                }
                else
                {
                    return null;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Alright, I set a breakpoint just inside the GetSeriesDetail method. It looks like Data.Series is returning the two series and when I clicked on "Bone" the id displays as 2, which it should. I noticed that seriesToReturn is always null. I have tried to change null to new Series(), new ComicBook() and still seriesToReturn is null.

Are you sure seriesToReturn is null? That gets set when the ID matches.

Or is it seriesToReturn.Issues that is null?

You are correct Steven. It is the seriesToReturn.Issues that is null. I clicked on Bone while I was debugging and that has an id of 2 so I had to step through the code a second time to see the seriesToReturn.Issues.

In a previous version I had a 1 in the brackets. Just this afternoon I changed it back to 0 but even then, the problem still remains.

Ok, so just because my guess about the sources out of sync was right doesn't mean that's the only issue.

So now try James' suggestion of stepping through and see what it does.
Hint: Pay close attention to what happens (or doesn't happen) in the loop.

Extra hint: The problem is the result of a closing brace ("}") in the wrong place.

Whew! All that downloading and comparing was a lot of work ... I hope it helped a little bit.

I'll unfollow now that you've chosen the best answer.