ASP.NET MVC Html.DropDownList SelectedValue

Question

I have tried this is RC1 and then upgraded to RC2 which did not resolve the issue.

// in my controller
ViewData["UserId"] = new SelectList(
    users, 
    "UserId", 
    "DisplayName", 
    selectedUserId.Value); // this has a value

result: the SelectedValue property is set on the object

// in my view
<%=Html.DropDownList("UserId", (SelectList)ViewData["UserId"])%>

result: all expected options are rendered to the client, but the selected attribute is not set. The item in SelectedValue exists within the list, but the first item in the list is always defaulted to selected.

How should I be doing this?

Update Thanks to John Feminella's reply I found out what the issue is. "UserId" is a property in the Model my View is strongly typed to. When Html.DropDownList("UserId" is changed to any other name but "UserId", the selected value is rendered correctly.

This results in the value not being bound to the model though.

Answer 1

Try this:

public class Person {
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

And then:

var list = new[] {   
    new Person { Id = 1, Name = "Name1" }, 
    new Person { Id = 2, Name = "Name2" }, 
    new Person { Id = 3, Name = "Name3" } 
};

var selectList = new SelectList(list, "Id", "Name", 2);
ViewData["People"] = selectList;

Html.DropDownList("PeopleClass", (SelectList)ViewData["People"])

With MVC RC2, I get:

<select id="PeopleClass" name="PeopleClass">
    <option value="1">Name1</option>
    <option selected="selected" value="2">Name2</option>
    <option value="3">Name3</option>
</select>

Answer 2

The issue still exists in Release 1 of ASP.NET MVC

Answer 3

Have you found a solution to this problem? I'm experiencing the same

Best Regards

Answer 4

This appears to be a bug in the SelectExtensions class as it will only check the ViewData rather than the model for the selected item. So the trick is to copy the selected item from the model into the ViewData collection under the name of the property.

This is taken from the answer I gave on the MVC forums, I also have a more complete answer in a blog post that uses Kazi's DropDownList attribute...

Given a model

public class ArticleType
{
   public Guid Id { get; set; }
   public string Description { get; set; }
}

public class Article
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public ArticleType { get; set; }
}

and a basic view model of

public class ArticleModel
{
     public Guid Id { get; set; }
     public string Name { get; set; }

     [UIHint("DropDownList")]
     public Guid ArticleType { get; set; }
}

Then we write a DropDownList editor template as follows..

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %>
<script runat="server">  
    IEnumerable<SelectListItem> GetSelectList()
    {
        var metaData = ViewData.ModelMetadata;
        if (metaData == null)
        {
            return null;
        }

        var selected = Model is SelectListItem ? ((SelectListItem) Model).Value : Model.ToString();
        ViewData[metaData.PropertyName] = selected;

        var key = metaData.PropertyName + "List";
        return (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewData[key];
    }
</script>
<%= Html.DropDownList(null, GetSelectList()) %>

This will also work if you change ArticleType in the view model to a SelectListItem, though you do have to implement a type converter as per Kazi's blog and register it to force the binder to treat this as a simple type.

In your controller we then have...

public ArticleController 
{
     ...
     public ActionResult Edit(int id)
     {
          var entity = repository.FindOne<Article>(id);
          var model = builder.Convert<ArticleModel>(entity);

          var types = repository.FindAll<ArticleTypes>();
          ViewData["ArticleTypeList"] = builder.Convert<SelectListItem>(types);

          return VIew(model);
     }
     ...
}

Answer 5

This is how I fixed this problem:

I had the following:

Controller:

ViewData["DealerTypes"] = Helper.SetSelectedValue(listOfValues, selectedValue) ;

View

<%=Html.DropDownList("DealerTypes", ViewData["DealerTypes"] as SelectList)%>

Changed by the following:

View

<%=Html.DropDownList("DealerTypesDD", ViewData["DealerTypes"] as SelectList)%>

It appears that the DropDown must not have the same name has the ViewData name :S weird but it worked.