Razor syntax to show a drop down list in asp.net mvc

Question

I have in my view model, a comma separated string:

vm.colours = "black, white, blue, green"

In my Razor page, I want to show a drop down list, so I have:

@Html.DropDownList(m => m.colours, new SelectList(Model.colours))

However, this gives me a select list item for every LETTER in the string.

Is there any way I can amend this, to give me a select list item for each colour?

Thank you,

Mark

Answer 1

At the moment you just send a string, which is just an array of characters, so in this context it's interpreted as such. Use Split method to separate the elements you want.

Edit:

Check this answer for code example of using Split in this case.

Answer 2

@Html.DropDownList(m => m.colours, new SelectList(Model.colours))

No overload of DropDownList accepts an expression. For that code to work you need to do it like this:

Html.DropDownList("give_it_a_name", new SelectList(Model.colours))

Or perhaps you mean to use DropDownListFor , if yes then you need two things:

1. A property that will accept the item that is selected from the dropdown
2. Your list that will be used to show options in the dropdown

Your view should look like this:

public class YourVM 
{
    public string SelectedColor{get;set;}
    public IEnumerable<string> Colors {get;set;}
}

You need to have something like this in your controller:

var colors = "black, white, blue, green";
vm.colours = colors.Split(',');

And finally in your view:

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.colours, new SelectList(Model.Colors))

Answer 3

Well, it looks like colours is not an IEnumerable<string> but just a string . As the SelectList will enumerate over the object passed into, that means in this case an enumeration over a string which returns all characters. Please try it using a string array:

vm.colours = new string[] { "black", "white", "blue", "green" };

The call to Html.DropDownList remains the same.