Populating a razor dropdownlist from a List<object> in MVC

Question

You can separate out your business logic into a viewmodel, so your view has cleaner separation.

First create a viewmodel to store the Id the user will select along with a list of items that will appear in the DropDown.

ViewModel:

public class UserRoleViewModel
{
    // Display Attribute will appear in the Html.LabelFor
    [Display(Name = "User Role")]
    public int SelectedUserRoleId { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> UserRoles { get; set; }
}

References:

• DisplayAttribute

Inside the controller create a method to get your UserRole list and transform it into the form that will be presented in the view.

Controller:

private IEnumerable<SelectListItem> GetRoles()
{
    var dbUserRoles = new DbUserRoles();
    var roles = dbUserRoles
                .GetRoles()
                .Select(x =>
                        new SelectListItem
                            {
                                Value = x.UserRoleId.ToString(),
                                Text = x.UserRole
                            });

    return new SelectList(roles, "Value", "Text");
}

public ActionResult AddNewUser()
{
    var model = new UserRoleViewModel
                    {
                        UserRoles = GetRoles()
                    };
    return View(model);
}

References:

• SelectListItem
• SelectList Constructor (IEnumerable, String, String)

Now that the viewmodel is created the presentation logic is simplified

View:

@model UserRoleViewModel

@Html.LabelFor(m => m.SelectedUserRoleId)
@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedUserRoleId, Model.UserRoles)

References:

• LabelExtensions.LabelFor
• SelectExtensions.DropDownListFor

This will produce:

<label for="SelectedUserRoleId">User Role</label>
<select id="SelectedUserRoleId" name="SelectedUserRoleId">
    <option value="1">First Role</option>
    <option value="2">Second Role</option>
    <option value="3">Etc...</option>
</select>

  @Html.DropDownList("ddl",Model.Select(item => new SelectListItem
{
    Value = item.RecordID.ToString(),
    Text = item.Name.ToString(),
     Selected = "select" == item.RecordID.ToString()
}))

One way might be;

    <select name="listbox" id="listbox">
    @foreach (var item in Model)
           {

                   <option value="@item.UserRoleId">
                      @item.UserRole 
                   </option>                  
           }
    </select>

Something close to:

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.UserRole, 
   new SelectList(Model.Roles, "UserRoleId", "UserRole", Model.Roles.First().UserRoleId), 
   new { /* any html  attributes here */ }) 

You need a SelectList to populate the DropDownListFor. For any HTML attributes you need, you can add:

new { @class = "DropDown", @id = "dropdownUserRole" }

Instead of a List<UserRole>, you can let your Model contain a SelectList<UserRole>. Also add a property SelectedUserRoleId to store... well... the selected UserRole's Id value.

Fill up the SelectList, then in your View use:

@Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedUserRoleId, x.UserRole)

and you should be fine.

See also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.mvc.selectlist(v=vs.108).aspx.

Your call to DropDownListFor needs a few more parameters to flesh it out. You need a SelectList as in the following SO question:

MVC3 DropDownListFor - a simple example?

With what you have there, you've only told it where to store the data, not where to load the list from.

   @{
        List<CategoryModel> CategoryList = CategoryModel.GetCategoryList(UserID);
        IEnumerable<SelectListItem> CategorySelectList = CategoryList.Select(x => new SelectListItem() { Text = x.CategoryName.Trim(), Value = x.CategoryID.Trim() });
    }
    <tr>
        <td>
            <B>Assigned Category:</B>
        </td>
        <td>
            @Html.DropDownList("CategoryList", CategorySelectList, "Select a Category (Optional)")
        </td>
    </tr>