Whats the best way to set a dropdown to selected in ASP.NET MVC markup?

Question

I have this html...

<select id="View" name="View">
   <option value="1">With issue covers</option>
   <option value="0">No issue covers</option>
 </select>

It won't let me insert code like this...

<select id="View" name="View">
   <option value="1" <% ..logic code..%> >With issue covers</option>
   <option value="0" <% ..logic code..%> >No issue covers</option>
 </select>

So whats the best way to set one to selected?

Update: Without using the HTML Helpers.

Answer 1

The "best" approach is probably to use the helpers:

var selectList = new SelectList(data, "ValueProp", "TextProp", data[1].ValueProp);
... Html.DropDownList("foo", selectList)

Where "data" could be an array of anonymous types, such as:

var data = new[] {
  new {Key=1, Text="With issue covers"},
  new {Key=0, Text="No issue covers"}
};
// todo: pick the selected index or value based on your logic
var selectList = new SelectList(data, "Key", "Text", data[1].Key);
Writer.Write(Html.DropDownList("foo", selectList));

Another approach might be to select the correct item client-side through script, but obviously that only works with script enabled.

Note it was missing comma and semicolon in data declaration, stopped it from working

Answer 2

I would agree with Marc on using helpers but if you must avoid them then you could try something like the following:

<select id="View" name="View">
   <option value="1" <% if (something) { %> selected <% } %> >With issue covers</option>
   <option value="0" <% if (!something) { %> selected <% } %> >No issue covers</option>
</select>