How to write a simple Html.DropDownListFor()?

Question

In ASP.NET MVC 2, I'd like to write a very simple dropdown list which gives static options. For example I'd like to provide choices between "Red", "Blue", and "Green".

Answer 1

See this MSDN article and an example usage here on Stack Overflow.

Let's say that you have the following Linq/POCO class:

public class Color
{
    public int ColorId { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

And let's say that you have the following model:

public class PageModel 
{
   public int MyColorId { get; set; }
}

And, finally, let's say that you have the following list of colors. They could come from a Linq query, from a static list, etc.:

public static IEnumerable<Color> Colors = new List<Color> { 
    new Color {
        ColorId = 1,
        Name = "Red"
    },
    new Color {
        ColorId = 2,
        Name = "Blue"
    }
};

In your view, you can create a drop down list like so:

<%= Html.DropDownListFor(n => n.MyColorId, 
                         new SelectList(Colors, "ColorId", "Name")) %>