How can I combine two fields in a SelectList text description?

Question

I want put in a selected list labels the name and surname of people of an EF model. I've tried with this:

public ActionResult Insert()
        {
            ViewData["accountlist"] = new SelectList(time.Anagrafica_Dipendente.ToList(), "ID_Dipendente", "Surname Name", null);             
            Giustificativi g = new Giustificativi();
            return View(g);
        }

but VS returns an error, because there isn't a attribute called "surname name". how can i concat the name and surname in the selectlist label?

thanks

Answer 1

you could do something like this:

ViewData["accountlist"] = 
    new SelectList((from s in time.Anagrafica_Dipendente.ToList() select new { 
        ID_Dipendente=s.ID_Dipendente,
        FullName = s.Surname + " " + s.Name}), 
        "ID_Dipendente", 
        "FullName", 
        null);

Answer 2

Add a new property to time.Anagrafica_Dipendente which will represent the concatenation of the two properties:

public string Fullname 
{
    get 
    {
        return string.Format("{0} {1}", Surname, Name);
    }
}

and then use this:

ViewData["accountlist"] = new SelectList(
    time.Anagrafica_Dipendente.ToList(), 
    "ID_Dipendente", 
    "Fullname", 
    null
); 

---

Update: As of C# 6.0, the property can be more concisely written as:

public string Fullname => string.Format("{0} {1}", Surname, Name);

Learn more about expression-bodied properties here.

Answer 3

I was looking for this answer and my easy way is adding a NotMapped attribute, this is my code:

[NotMapped]
public string FullName
   {
     get
       {
         return Name + " " + LastName;
       }
   }

Then you can use the normal way in the controller, this is my code, Owner the the foreign key related to AspNetUsers

ViewBag.Owner = new SelectList(db.AspNetUsers, "Id", "FullName", product.Owner);