Implementing Dropdownlist on Asp.net MVC 3 from viewModel

Question

I\'m new to .net and mvc platform, i have so many int fields that stores some dropdownlist values, i\'ve created fields int type due to database size so i\'m implementing dr

Answer 1

If I was you, I should use a dictionary key / displayName like this for the SelectList :

one static member (as it is static...) :

static Dictionary<int, string> CitiesDict = new Dictionary<int, string>()
    {
        { -1 , "--Select One---"},
        { 0 ,"Chicago"},
        { 1 ,"New York"},
        { 2 ,"Zimbabwe"},
    };

One Property for the dropdown :

public SelectList Cities { get; set; }

Initialized in constructor like this :

Cities = new SelectList(CitiesDict , "Key", "Value", -1);

Then in the view for editing :

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Property.City, Model.Cities) 

And for displaying:

@(CitiesDict.ContainsKey(Model.City) ? CitiesDict[Model.City] : "")

Answer 2

I haven't used Razor syntax yet (still on MVC2), but I believe this part is wrong:

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Property.City,
        new SelectList(Model.Cities,"Value","Text"))

You need to tell the view engine what values to populate the select list with (the value attribute and text associated with the option element), but I don't know the correct MVC3 syntax to help you fix it. Hopefully someone else can...