I have a view-model like this:
public class U1MyProfile1ViewModel : U1Profile
{
public List<SelectListItem> CountryList { get; set; }
}
Thinking that I want the model accessible to the view, plus a some extra fields that aren't really part of the model, such as a drop down list of countries.
Then in the controller I try to "pass the model over to the view-model"
var myProfile = await _mainDbContext.U1Profiles
.AsNoTracking()
.FirstOrDefaultAsync(i => i.SiteUserId == mySiteUserId);
U1MyProfile1ViewModel myProfileViewModel = (U1MyProfile1ViewModel)myProfile;
this compiles, but I get a runtime error of:
InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'WebApp.Models.U1Profile' to type 'WebApp.ViewModels.U1MyProfile1ViewModel'.
Any ideas on how to do this easily?
Something simpler than assigning the model to the view-model field by field.
Set your View model like follow:
View modal
public class U1MyProfile1ViewModel
{
public List<SelectListItem> CountryList { get; set; }
public U1Profile U1Profile{get;set;}
public string othervariable{get;set;}
}
Controller
var myProfile = await _mainDbContext.U1Profiles
.AsNoTracking()
.FirstOrDefaultAsync(i => i.SiteUserId == mySiteUserId);
U1MyProfile1ViewModel myProfileViewModel = new U1MyProfile1ViewModel;
U1MyProfile1ViewModel.U1Profile=myProfile;
U1MyProfile1ViewModel.CountryList=yourcountrylist;
And finally just passed your viewmodal to View and you get your result.
For better understanding just see below link:
Link1
Link2
I was watching a tutorial about HtmlHelper for DropDown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79aYSOcmpV8
Around min 8, he is reading the db to replace some hardcode values.
To pass list of Departments from the controller, store them in "ViewBag"
public ActionResult Index()
{
// Connect to the database
SampleDBContext db = new SampleDBContext();
// Retrieve departments, and build SelectList
ViewBag.Departments = new SelectList(db.Departments, "Id", "Name");
return View();
}
Last step.
Now in the "Index" view, access Departments list from "ViewBag"
#Html.DropDownList("Departments", "Select Department")
I dont see anything like strong type model on the view.
So how the Helper know Departments refers to a value in the ViewBag?
When you add a value to ViewBag, it is also added to the ViewData property of ViewContext when the view is generated. The DropDownList() overload that your using in equivalent to passing a null SelectList in
#Html.DropDownList("Departments", null, "Select Department")
in which case, internally, the helper searches the ViewData property to find a matching key which is an IEnumerable<SelectListItem> (which "Departments" is). You can see the relevant code in the private static MvcHtmlString SelectInternal() method of the source code
// If we got a null selectList, try to use ViewData to get the list of items.
if (selectList == null)
{
selectList = htmlHelper.GetSelectData(name);
....
}
Note that the example in the tutorial is a poor approach, using 'magic' strings and requiring you to access the value in the POST method using Request.Form["Departments"]. A far better approach is to use a view model and strongly bind to your view model, for example
public class MyViewModel
{
public int SelectedDepartment { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> DepartmentList { get; set; }
...
}
and the GET method would be
public ActionResult Create()
{
MyViewModel model = new MyViewModel
{
DepartmentList = new SelectList(db.Departments, "Id", "Name");
};
return View(model);
}
and in the view
#model MyViewModel
....
#Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedDepartment, Model.DepartmentList, "Select Department")
and post the form back to
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(MyViewModel model)
I have 3 models and corresponding tables (EnquiryModel, EmployeeModel, RegionModel).
I want to populate a dropdown list in both the 'create' views of Enquiry and Employee.
That dropdown list should be filled with the data from the 'Region_Name' field in the RegionModel Table.
How can I do this?
I have RegionModel:
namespace MvcConQuery.Models
{
[Table("Region_Details")]
public class RegionModel
{
[Key]
[DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public Int32 Region_id { get; set; }
public string Region { get; set; }
}
}
And also I have EmployeeModel and EnquiryModel, I give the following code in controller of these models:
public ActionResult Create()
{
IEnumerable<SelectListItem> abc = new SelectList(db.Regions, "Region_id", "Region");
ViewBag.regions = abc;
return View();
}
I give this code in Create View:
#Html.DropDownList("regions","select")
But I got the error:
There is no ViewData item of type 'IEnumerable' that has the key 'regions'.
Please help me to code the Create()function in controller and the Create View.
Try like this,
DATAEntities _context = new DATAEntities ();
var List = (from r in _context.Registrations select r).ToList();
ViewBag.CustomerName = new SelectList(List, "Region_id", "Region");
View
#Html.DropDownList("regions", (SelectList)ViewBag.CustomerName, "--Select--")
If you have any concerned let me know.
I am stuck in a problem, I have retrieved all the value for a drop down in a view bag and want to display them at run time. I have achieved it by using the following code for the controller
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index()
{
var categoryList = new PersonalApp();
SelectList catList = new SelectList(categoryList.GetAffinity().ToList(), "ClientName", "AffinityNum");
ViewBag.categoryList = catList;
return View();
}
and the following code for the view
#using (Html.BeginForm("index", "Home"))
{
#Html.DropDownList("categoryList", "Branch Type")
}
It really works but now I want to bind it with a model now. I have use the following code for this:
#Html.DropDownListFor(model=>model.AffinityNum, "categoryList", "BranchType")
But it gives me an error as CategoryList cannot be used as a parameter with the above code. How will I get this resolved as I can have all the values of a dropdown in the categorylist and I can bind it with a model property affinityNum with it as well.
Thanks
Your model should have an IEnumerable<SelectListItem> property that will hold the values:
public class PersonalApp
{
public string AffinityNum { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> CategoryList { get; set; }
}
that you will populate in your controller action and pass to the view:
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index()
{
var model = new PersonalApp();
var categories = categoryList.GetAffinity().ToList();
SelectList catList = new SelectList(categories, "ClientName", "AffinityNum");
model.CategoryList = catList;
return View(model);
}
and finally in your strongly typed view you will use this property to bind the dropdown list to:
#model PersonalApp
...
#Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.AffinityNum, Model.CategoryList, "BranchType")
Please try;
#Html.DropDownListFor(model=>model.AffinityNum, (SelectList)ViewBag.categoryList)
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.
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.
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>
You can still name the DropDown as "UserId" and still have model binding working correctly for you.
The only requirement for this to work is that the ViewData key that contains the SelectList does not have the same name as the Model property that you want to bind. In your specific case this would be:
// in my controller
ViewData["Users"] = new SelectList(
users,
"UserId",
"DisplayName",
selectedUserId.Value); // this has a value
// in my view
<%=Html.DropDownList("UserId", (SelectList)ViewData["Users"])%>
This will produce a select element that is named UserId, which has the same name as the UserId property in your model and therefore the model binder will set it with the value selected in the html's select element generated by the Html.DropDownList helper.
I'm not sure why that particular Html.DropDownList constructor won't select the value specified in the SelectList when you put the select list in the ViewData with a key equal to the property name. I suspect it has something to do with how the DropDownList helper is used in other scenarios, where the convention is that you do have a SelectList in the ViewData with the same name as the property in your model. This will work correctly:
// in my controller
ViewData["UserId"] = new SelectList(
users,
"UserId",
"DisplayName",
selectedUserId.Value); // this has a value
// in my view
<%=Html.DropDownList("UserId")%>
The code in the previous MVC 3 post does not work but it is a good start. I will fix it. I have tested this code and it works in MVC 3 Razor C# This code uses the ViewModel pattern to populate a property that returns a List<SelectListItem>.
The Model class
public class Product
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public decimal Price { get; set; }
}
The ViewModel class
using System.Web.Mvc;
public class ProductListviewModel
{
public List<SelectListItem> Products { get; set; }
}
The Controller Method
public ViewResult List()
{
var productList = new List<SelectListItem>();
foreach (Product p in Products)
{
productList.Add(new SelectListItem
{
Value = p.ProductId.ToString(),
Text = "Product: " + p.Name + " " + p.Price.ToString(),
// To set the selected item use the following code
// Note: you should not set every item to selected
Selected = true
});
}
ProductListViewModel productListVM = new ProductListViewModeld();
productListVM.Products = productList;
return View(productListVM);
}
The view
#model MvcApp.ViewModels.ProductListViewModel
#using (Html.BeginForm())
{
#Html.DropDownList("Products", Model.Products)
}
The HTML output will be something like
<select id="Products" name="Products">
<option value="3">Product: Widget 10.00</option>
<option value="4">Product: Gadget 5.95</option>
</select>
depending on how you format the output. I hope this helps. The code does work.
If we don't think this is a bug the team should fix, at lease MSDN should improve the document. The confusing really comes from the poor document of this. In MSDN, it explains the parameters name as,
Type: System.String
The name of the form field to return.
This just means the final html it generates will use that parameter as the name of the select input. But, it actually means more than that.
I guess the designer assumes that user will use a view model to display the dropdownlist, also will use post back to the same view model. But in a lot cases, we don't really follow that assumption.
Use the example above,
public class Person {
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
If we follow the assumption,we should define a view model for this dropdownlist related view
public class PersonsSelectViewModel{
public string SelectedPersonId,
public List<SelectListItem> Persons;
}
Because when post back, only the selected value will post back, so it assume it should post back to the model's property SelectedPersonId, which means Html.DropDownList's first parameter name should be 'SelectedPersonId'. So, the designer thinks that when display the model view in the view, the model's property SelectedPersonId should hold the default value of that dropdown list. Even thought your List<SelectListItem> Persons already set the Selected flag to indicate which one is selected/default, the tml.DropDownList will actually ignore that and rebuild it's own IEnumerable<SelectListItem> and set the default/selected item based on the name.
Here is the code from asp.net mvc
private static MvcHtmlString SelectInternal(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, ModelMetadata metadata,
string optionLabel, string name, IEnumerable<SelectListItem> selectList, bool allowMultiple,
IDictionary<string, object> htmlAttributes)
{
...
bool usedViewData = false;
// If we got a null selectList, try to use ViewData to get the list of items.
if (selectList == null)
{
selectList = htmlHelper.GetSelectData(name);
usedViewData = true;
}
object defaultValue = (allowMultiple) ? htmlHelper.GetModelStateValue(fullName, typeof(string[])) : htmlHelper.GetModelStateValue(fullName, typeof(string));
// If we haven't already used ViewData to get the entire list of items then we need to
// use the ViewData-supplied value before using the parameter-supplied value.
if (defaultValue == null && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(name))
{
if (!usedViewData)
{
defaultValue = htmlHelper.ViewData.Eval(name);
}
else if (metadata != null)
{
defaultValue = metadata.Model;
}
}
if (defaultValue != null)
{
selectList = GetSelectListWithDefaultValue(selectList, defaultValue, allowMultiple);
}
...
return tagBuilder.ToMvcHtmlString(TagRenderMode.Normal);
}
So, the code actually went further, it not only try to look up the name in the model, but also in the viewdata, as soon as it finds one, it will rebuild the selectList and ignore your original Selected.
The problem is, in a lot of cases, we don't really use it that way. we just want to throw in a selectList with one/multiple item(s) Selected set true.
Of course the solution is simple, use a name that not in the model nor in the viewdata. When it can not find a match, it will use the original selectList and the original Selected will take affect.
But i still think mvc should improve it by add one more condition
if ((defaultValue != null) && (!selectList.Any(i=>i.Selected)))
{
selectList = GetSelectListWithDefaultValue(selectList, defaultValue, allowMultiple);
}
Because, if the original selectList has already had one Selected, why would you ignore that?
Just my thoughts.
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);
}
...
}
The problems is that dropboxes don't work the same as listboxes, at least the way ASP.NET MVC2 design expects: A dropbox allows only zero or one values, as listboxes can have a multiple value selection. So, being strict with HTML, that value shouldn't be in the option list as "selected" flag, but in the input itself.
See the following example:
<select id="combo" name="combo" value="id2">
<option value="id1">This is option 1</option>
<option value="id2" selected="selected">This is option 2</option>
<option value="id3">This is option 3</option>
</select>
<select id="listbox" name="listbox" multiple>
<option value="id1">This is option 1</option>
<option value="id2" selected="selected">This is option 2</option>
<option value="id3">This is option 3</option>
</select>
The combo has the option selected, but also has its value attribute set. So, if you want ASP.NET MVC2 to render a dropbox and also have a specific value selected (i.e., default values, etc.), you should give it a value in the rendering, like this:
// in my view
<%=Html.DropDownList("UserId", selectListItems /* (SelectList)ViewData["UserId"]*/, new { #Value = selectedUser.Id } /* Your selected value as an additional HTML attribute */)%>
In ASP.NET MVC 3 you can simply add your list to ViewData...
var options = new List<SelectListItem>();
options.Add(new SelectListItem { Value = "1", Text = "1" });
options.Add(new SelectListItem { Value = "2", Text = "2" });
options.Add(new SelectListItem { Value = "3", Text = "3", Selected = true });
ViewData["options"] = options;
...and then reference it by name in your razor view...
#Html.DropDownList("options")
You don't have to manually "use" the list in the DropDownList call. Doing it this way correctly set the selected value for me too.
Disclaimer:
Haven't tried this with the web forms view engine, but it should work too.
I haven't tested this in the v1 and v2, but it might work.
I managed to get the desired result, but with a slightly different approach. In the Dropdownlist i used the Model and then referenced it. Not sure if this was what you were looking for.
#Html.DropDownList("Example", new SelectList(Model.FeeStructures, "Id", "NameOfFeeStructure", Model.Matters.FeeStructures))
Model.Matters.FeeStructures in above is my id, which could be your value of the item that should be selected.