ASP.NET MVC Razor render SelectList without encoding

Question

How can I get my select list to render without HTML coding

@{
    var noiceList = new SelectList(new[] { new {ID = "", Name = ""}, 
                                   new {ID = "y", Name = "Yes   after3Space"}, 
                 "ID", "Name"); 
 }
 @Html.DropDownList("noice", @noiceList )

rendered

..
<option value="y">Yes&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;3Space</option>
...

How do I get it to instead render

<option value="y">Yes&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;after3Space</option>

Answer 1

The easiest way to achieve this in C# is to use \xA0 instead of   so you can avoid all that extra code.

Credit goes to this answer: How to retain spaces in DropDownList - ASP.net MVC Razor views

Answer 2

Unfortunately, this behavior is not built-in. The Html.DropDownList method (and most other HtmlHelper methods) always escapes all input text.

Workaround

There are workarounds, however. For example, you could create your own HtmlHelper method that allows unescaped HTML.

But if your needs are as simple as your example, here's a simple workaround:
Use a placeholder, such as |, and then replace it with  , like this:

@{
    var noiceList = new SelectList(new[] { new {ID = "", Name = ""}, 
                                   new {ID = "y", Name = "Yes|||after3Space"}, 
                 "ID", "Name"); 
 }
 @Html.Raw(Html.DropDownList("noice", @noiceList).ToString().Replace("|", " "))

Note, you could also create a simple extension method to really reduce the amount of code required:

 public static HtmlString Replace(this HtmlString input, string findAll, string replaceWith) {
    return new HtmlString(input.ToString().Replace(findAll, replaceWith));
 }

This simplifies your Html code to:

 @Html.DropDownList("noice", @noiceList).Replace("|", " ")