Question

Asp.net MVC2: I have many dropdownlists in my mvc application. At first, I started by creating a table for each one with a unique ID and name and referring to them in the controllers and views. The application got bigger, and it was suggested that I use a lookup table, that contains lookuptype and lookupvalue as compound primary key and fill all the values for the dropdownlists in it. I’ve looked all over the internet, the only method used for mvc is one table for each dropdownlist! Can someone explain to me how I can implement it, and in detail please becoz I’m totally lost. A link to a tutorial would also be great.
I’m using vb.net and linq to sql.

Answer 1

I actually used a slightly different approach. I created a table that has a composite primary key, LookupName and LookupValue. Then in the datacontext I declared a method that takes the lookupname as a parameter, and then brings a list of lookupvalues whose lookupname match this parameter. In the original table (ex.Contact) I created a field called status, where the selected value will be saved. Then in the controller, I used viewdata to create dropdownlists.

Example: _db represents the datacontext

Viewdata(‘Status’)= new selectlist(_db.Getlookupname(‘status’),’lookupname’,’lookupname’)

and then in the view

html.dropdownlist(‘status’)

I also named the dropdownlist with the same fieldname ‘status’ that is found in the target table ‘Contact’.

And it worked, without any complexity or errors.
Thanks for the help. And I hope this will be helpful to someone else!