DropDownListFor Not Selecting Value

Question

I\'m using the DropDownListFor helper method inside of an edit page and I\'m not having any luck getting it to select the value that I specify. I noticed a similar question

Answer 1

Try:

<%= Html.DropDownListFor(
    model => model.AddressStateAbbr,
    new SelectList(
        Model.States.OrderBy(s => s.StateAbbr),
        "StateAbbr",
        "StateName",
        Model.AddressStateAbbr), "-- Select State --")%>

or in Razor syntax:

@Html.DropDownListFor(
    model => model.AddressStateAbbr,
    new SelectList(
        Model.States.OrderBy(s => s.StateAbbr),
        "StateAbbr",
        "StateName",
        Model.AddressStateAbbr), "-- Select State --")

The expression based helpers don't seem to respect the Selected property of the SelectListItems in your SelectList.

Answer 2

I also having similar issue and I solve it by as follows, set the

model.States property on your controller to what you need to be selected

model.States="California"

and then you will get "California" as default value.

Answer 3

this problem is common. change viewbag property name to other then model variable name used on page.

Answer 4

If you're doing it properly and using a model--unlike all these ViewBag weirdos--and still seeing the issue, it's because @Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.MyValue, @Model.MyOptions) can't match MyValue with the choices it has in MyOptions. The two potential reasons for that are:

1. MyValue is null. You haven't set it in your ViewModel. Making one of MyOptions have a Selected=true won't solve this.
2. More subtly, the type of MyValue is different than the types in MyOptions. So like, if MyValue is (int) 1, but your MyOptions are a list of padded strings {"01", "02", "03", ...}, it's obviously not going to select anything.

Answer 5

I know this is an old question but I have been having the same issue in 2020.

It turns out the issue was with the model property being called "Title", I renamed it to "GivenTitle" and it now works as expected.

From

Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.Title, Model.Titles, "Please Select", new { @class = "form-control" })

to

Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.GivenTitle, Model.GivenTitles, "Please Select", new { @class = "form-control" })

Answer 6

While not addressing this question - it may help future googlers if they followed my thought path:

I wanted a multiple select and this attribute hack on DropDownListFor wasn't auto selecting

Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.TrainingLevelSelected, Model.TrainingLevelSelectListItems, new {multiple= "multiple" })

instead I should have been using ListBoxFor which made everything work

Html.ListBoxFor(m => m.TrainingLevelSelected, Model.TrainingLevelSelectListItems)