Views in an MVC application

Let's change the Index() method in HomeController to return a list of country names. Since country names are strings, return List<string>. Get rid of id and name parameters.

 public List<string> Index() {
    return new List<string>()
    {
        "India",
        "US",
        "UK",
        "Canada"
    }; } 


Run the application and notice that the output is not as expected.  System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]
To correct this problem, let's add a view to our project.

1. Right click on the Index() function
 2. Click on "Add View"  
3. Notice that, the view name in "Add View" dialog box matches the name of the controller action method  
4. Select "Razor" as the view engine  
5. Leave the rest of the defaults as is, and click "Add" button

Make the following modifications to the Index() function of the HomeController class, so that, the HomeController returns a view instead of List<string>. //
 Change the return type from List<string> to ActionResult

 public ActionResult Index() {
    // Store the list of Countries in ViewBag.  
    ViewBag.Countries = new List<string>()
    {
        "India",
        "US",
        "UK",
        "Canada"
    };
    // Finally return a view
    return View(); }

We will discuss ViewBag & ViewData, and the differences between them in our next video session. For now, understand that, ViewBag & ViewData is a mechanism to pass data from the controller to the view. 

Please Note: To pass data from controller to a view, It's always a good practice to use strongly typed view models instead of using ViewBag & ViewData. We will discuss view models in a later video session.

Now, copy and paste the following code in "Index.cshtml" view
  
@{    ViewBag.Title = "Countries List"; }
<h2>Countries List</h2>
<ul>
@foreach (string strCountry in ViewBag.Countries) {
    <li>@strCountry</li> }
</ul>

Please Note: We use "@" symbol to switch between html and c# code.