Dropdown in ASP.NET MVC 3

Question

I am new to MVC so probably confused . can somebody please explain me the dropdown in razor.my questions are-

if possible please explain with an example.

Reigo Hein · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-27 07:39:10Z

1

DropDownList is generated by code like this:
```
@Html.DropDownList("PersonId", new SelectList(Model.People, "Id", "Text");
```
On the other hand, DropDownListFor is generated like this:
```
@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.PersonId, new SelectList(Model.People, "Id", "Text")
```
Problem with DropDownList is that it has a magic string and if you decide to refactor the model later on, there's a high change you'll forget to change the magic string too.
You could do a LINQ query like this:
```
var datalist = New SelectList(from x in _peopleService
                              select new SelectListItem { Text = x.Name, Value = x.Id});
```
If you don't have a service or an ORM between it you need to apply it to your situation, but you can generate a list like that.
After nr 2, you can
```
datalist.Add(new SelectListItem() { Text = "Other", Value = "-1"});
```
Also you have to put that datalist in your viewmodel/model that is passed to the View, so you can generate a selectlist item with that. In this case you could just do:
```
@Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.PersonId, Model.PersonList);
```
if you stored the list as PersonList in Model.
In your Viewmodel (Well, model in mvc) you have a property where the selected item will be stored, look at the 1st question - In this instance the selected item's id will be stored in the PersonId property.

answered Feb 27, 2013 at 7:39

Reigo Hein

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1 Comment

you could probably mention how enums and dropdowns work together aswell. I usually have an enum for a dropdown. :)