Selected value not working for SelectList

Question

I found many questions and answers related to this issue but nothing worked for me

I am creating a dropdown list like this

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SchoolYears, new SelectList(Model.SchoolYears, "YearId", "StartDates", Model.CurrentYearId), new { @class = "field_Dropdown", style = "width:100px;",onchange="return searchStudents();" })

(Model.CurrentYearId is of type int)

But it never lets current year selected.

From this post, I got that we should use string for selected value (although I don't know why because it allows object for selected value)

DropDownList SelectList SelectedValue issue

so I tried all these variations

new SelectList(Model.SchoolYears, "YearId", "StartDates", Model.CurrentYearId.ToString())

new SelectList(Model.SchoolYears, "YearId", "StartDates", 2)

new SelectList(Model.SchoolYears, "YearId", "StartDates", "2")

But they even didn't work.

There is way to create the select list through linq query or foreach loop and mark selected property of each item but why the above doesn't work?

Answer 1

Found the problem.

The mistake I was doing is using this

m => m.SchoolYears // m.SchoolYears in a list of string

When I changed it to this

m => m.SelectedYearId // m.SelectedYearId is an integer property

it worked like a charm, so finally I have this working

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedYearId, new SelectList(Model.SchoolYears, "YearId", "StartDates", Model.CurrentYearId), new { @class = "field_Dropdown", style = "width:100px;",onchange="return searchStudents();" })

Thanks!