Populating dropdown list with hardcoded values in .NET MVC 5

Question

I have a class like this:

public class MyClass
{
     public SelectList saleRange = new SelectList(new[]
            {
                new SelectListItem {  Selected = true ,Text = "--- Select date range ---", Value = "0" },
                new SelectListItem { Selected = false, Text = "7 days", Value = "7" },
                new SelectListItem  { Selected = false, Text = "14 days", Value = "14" },
                new SelectListItem { Selected = false, Text = "21 days", Value = "21" },
                new SelectListItem  { Selected = false, Text = "30 days", Value = "30" },
            }, "Value", "Text");

}

My action:

   public ActionResult Index()
        { 
            var model = new MyClass();
            return View(model);
        }

And the view looks like this:

  @Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.saleRange, (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)Model.saleRange,new { @class= "select2" , @style = "width:95%;border-left:2px solid #eee" })

But I'm getting this error:

Unable to cast object of type 'ServiceStack.Html.SelectList' to type 'System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[System.Web.Mvc.SelectListItem]'.

What am I doing wrong here? How can I populate the dropdownlist from my viewmodel with hardcoded values??

Answer 1

Change your model to the following (note that the SelectList class needs to be from namespace System.Web.Mvc , not ServiceStack ):

public class MyClass
{
    //You need somewhere to put the sales range thats selected
    public string SelectedSalesRange { get; set; }

    public System.Web.Mvc.SelectList SaleRange = new System.Web.Mvc.SelectList(new[]
        {
            //Note that I have removed the "Default" item
            //And the Selected=False (since the default value of a bool is false)

            new System.Web.Mvc.SelectListItem { Text = "7 days", Value = "7" },
            new System.Web.Mvc.SelectListItem  {Text = "14 days", Value = "14" },
            new System.Web.Mvc.SelectListItem { Text = "21 days", Value = "21" },
            new System.Web.Mvc.SelectListItem  { Text = "30 days", Value = "30" },
        }, "Value", "Text");

}

And change your view to:

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.SelectedSalesRange, SaleRange, "--- Select date range ---") 

If you want to use ServiceStack, then the entire nature of your question is invalid and you need to edit or ask a new question. You have only asked about MVC5

Answer 2

SelectList is not the same thing as IEnumerable<SelectListItem> , so there's no way to cast it to that. You could cast saleRange.Items , as that property of SelectList is in fact an IEnumerable<SelectListItem> .

However, that's completely unnecessary in the first place. As saleRange is a property on your model, it is strongly typed and you don't need to cast it to anything. SelectList is already a valid type to pass there, so just use saleRange directly.