Setting the Selected Value of a Dropdown list in the View from the Controller Action

Question

I have 5 dropdowns, which are basically displaying "Select", "Yes" and "No". Initially they are set to "Select". Once he user chooses something, I am storing the data in a cookie (with Jquery) and eventually passing this to the ViewModel so that I can use it in the Controller.

When the user refreshes the page, I want these dropdown lists to be populated again with the value I have in the ViewModel.

At the moment I have the following code :-

Inside the View I have

<%: Html.DropDownList("FirstQuestYesNo", ViewData["FirstQuestYesNoData"] as SelectList, new { @class = "normalDropdowns" })%>

and in my controller I have the following :-

            var ddlYesNoData = new SelectList(new[]
                                      {
                                          new {ID="",Name=@Resources.GeneralTerms.GeneralTerms_Select},
                                          new {ID="Yes",Name=@Resources.GeneralTerms.GeneralTerms_Yes},
                                          new{ID="No",Name=@Resources.GeneralTerms.GeneralTerms_No},
                                      },
        "ID", "Name", 1);


        //Refresh the YesNo dropdown with the correct vals
        Dictionary<string, string> YesNoData = new Dictionary<string, string>();
        YesNoData.Add("FirstQuestYesNoData", viewModel.FirstQuestYesNoValue);
        YesNoData.Add("SecondQuestYesNoData", viewModel.SecondQuestYesNoValue);
        YesNoData.Add("ThirdQuestYesNoData", viewModel.ThirdQuestYesNoValue);
        YesNoData.Add("FourthQuestYesNoData", viewModel.FourthQuestYesNoValue);
        YesNoData.Add("FifthQuestYesNoData", viewModel.FifthQuestYesNoValue);

        foreach (var item in YesNoData)
        {
            ViewData[item.Key] = ddlYesNoData;
            if (item.Value != null)
            {
                var selected = ddlYesNoData.Where(x => x.Value == item.Value).First();
                selected.Selected = true;
            }
        }

So basically what I am doing is get the value of each dropdown from the viewModel, and then try to set that value inside my View. As a result of what I am doing, I am getting all the DropdownLists option as "Select" instead of the value inside my viewModel.

The problem is that I do not know how to "target" the specific DropDownList. How can I target the DropDown (in this case "FirstQuestYesNo") from the Controller using my code?

Thanks for your help and time.

Answer 1

In your controller action simply set the FirstQuestYesNo property to the corresponding value. For example:

ViewData["FirstQuestYesNo"] = "Yes"; // this value might come from a cookie

This will automatically preselect the option with value="Yes" . Obviously this value will come from the cookie. You don't need any foreach loops.