Create DropDownListFor from SelectList with default value

Question

I have a dropdownlistfor:

 @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Item.Item.Status, new SelectList(@Model.AllStatus, \"id\", \"Description\"),          


        

Answer 1

I ended up using a variant of thomasjaworski's answer.

View:

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.SelectedStatusIndex, new SelectList(@Model.StatusSelectList, "Value", "Text"), new { id = "statusDropdown" })

ViewModel constructor

        StatusSelectList = AllStatus.Select(x =>
                                        new StatusSelectListItem
                                        {
                                            Text = x.Description,
                                            Value = x.id.ToString()
                                        }).ToList();

        this.SelectedStatusIndex = 2;//Default Status is New

Controller on HTTP POST

I set model.Item.Item.Status seperately from the dropdown itself:

model.Item.Item.Status = model.SelectedStatusIndex;

because the dropdown set's the value of the expression passed as the first argument:

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.SelectedStatusIndex, new SelectList(@Model.StatusSelectList, "Value", "Text"), new { id = "statusDropdown" })

In this case model.SelectedStatusIndex is what is set by the dropdown. This controller implementation is what I found to be tricky.