Question

Can someone help me with getting values from a dropdownlist in asp.net mvc?

I can get values from textboxes,etc…but,how do I get these 2 things…

1. Getting Selected Item Value of the drop down list from the controller class
2. Getting all the list of items of the drop down list from the controller class

Thanks

Answer 1

You can get the selected value from a drop down list the same way as you do for text boxes.

Using default model binding

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult GetValueExample(string MyList) {
  //MyList will contain the selected value
  //...
}

or from a FormCollection

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult GetValueExample(FormCollection form) {
  string val = form["MyList"];
  //...
}

or from the request

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult GetValueExample(string MyList) {
  string val = Request.Form["MyList"];  //or
  val = Request["MyList"];
  //...
}

Where your drop down list is named “MyList”.

<%= Html.DropDownList("MyList", MyItems) %>

or straight HTML

<select name="MyList">
  <option value="1">Item 1</option>
  <option value="2">Item 2</option>
</select>

The browser will only submit the selected value from the drop down list and not all the other values. To get the list of all the other items you should invoke the code that populated the list in the first place (assuming you used Html.DropDownList()).

Update

[AcceptVerbs(Http.Get)]
public ActionResult GetValueExample() {
  ViewData["MyItems"] = GetSelectList();
  return View();
}

[AcceptVerbs(Http.Get)]
public ActionResult GetValueExample(string MyList) {
  //MyList contains the selected value
  SelectList list = GetSelectList(); //list will contain the original list of items
  //...
}

private SelectList GetSelectList() {
  Dictionary<string, string> list = new Dictionary<string, string>();
  list.Add("Item 1", "1");
  list.Add("Item 2", "2");
  list.Add("Item 3", "3");
  return new SelectList(list, "value", "key");
}

//...

<%= Html.DropDownList("MyList", ViewData["MyItems"] as SelectList) %>