Populate a dropdown list from db

Question

I have an mvc 3 application with 2 tables in my entity framework.

PurchaseTable which was PurchaseID,PurchaseDate & ProductID I have another table called Product which contains ProductID and ProductName. creating a new view to insert a new purchase how do I change the textbox in the view for ProductID to be a dropdown bound by the ProductName in the Product table?

Answer 1

Create a ViewModel:

public class CreatePurchaseViewModel
{
   public Purchase Purchase { get; set; }
   public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Products { get; set; }
   public int SelectedProductId { get; set; }
}

Setup the View with the ViewModel:

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult CreateProduct()
{
   var model = new CreatePurchaseViewModel
   {
      Products = repository.FindAllProducts().Select(x =>
              new SelectListItem
              {
                  Text = x.ProductName,
                  Value = x.ProductId
              }
   };

   return View(model);
}

Then simply bind to the ViewModel and use the DropDownListFor HTML Helper:

<! -- other code to bind to Purchase, and then: -->

<%= Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedProductId, Model.Products) %>

Then when you submit the form, the SelectedProductId value in the model will be populated with the selected value from the dropdown list.