ASP.NET MVC: putting custom attributes into option tag in select list

Question

I'm using ASP.NET MVC, and am trying to render a select list with the HtmlHelper.DropDownListFor method, like so:

<%= Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.AllTopics, SelectListHelper.GetSelectListItems(Model.AllTopics), "Select a Topic", new { id = "allTopics", @class = "topic-dropdown" })%> 

where SelectListHelper just returns an IList<SelectListItem> from whatever collection we're passing in. This works fine for simple things, but I want to be able to add a title attribute to each option tag (not the select list itself). But the DropDownListFor only takes in an IEnumerable<SelectListItem>, and the SelectListItem does not have anyplace that I can put in the title attribute.

Is there any way to do this without foregoing the DropDownListFor method and writing out the select list and each element by hand?

Answer 1

DropDownList and derivatives don't support the functionality you're looking for. But you could also simply process the string returned by DropDownList.

<%=    Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.AllTopics,     SelectListHelper.GetSelectListItems(Model.AllTopics),     "Select a Topic",      new { id = "allTopics", @class = "topic-dropdown" })   .Replace("<option", "<option attr=\"value\"") %>