Question

Data:

var countries = new Dictionary<string,string>();
countries.Add("AF","Afghanistan");
countries.Add("US","United States");
countries.Add("FR","France");

Razor:

@Html.DropdownList("Countries",new SelectList(countries, "key", "value", "US"), "Select Country")

Issue: in my razor, I’m specifying "US" for the selectedValue, and "Select Country" for optionLabel. I expect this to insert "Select Country" as the first item in the dropdown, AND have "US" already selected for me.

What actually happens: "Select Country" is inserted, but "US" is NOT selected. "Select Country" is.

Question: can I have both? Where Razor injects "Please Select", but also pre-selects "US" as the default?

Please note: I’m getting the data from a table in my database, so I’d prefer not to have an actual row in there with “Please select”, or have to insert it myself into the dictionary. It’s easier to do Model.Countries = dbRepo.GetCountries() in my controller vs. declaring an empty dictionary, adding “Please Select”, then looping thru .GetCountries() and adding to the original dictionary before setting it to Model.Countries for my view.

Thanks!

Answer 1

This should work. No idea why it doesn’t because you haven’t shown your actual code. Probably there’s no option with key = "US" in your actual dataset.

But anyway let me illustrate with an example the approach that I would recommend which is to use a view model and a strongly typed helper DropDownListFor helper.

Model:

public class CountriesViewModel
{
    public string SelectedCountryCode { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Countries { get; set; }
}

Controller:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        var model = new CountriesViewModel();
        // TODO: obviously those will come from your database
        model.Countries = new[]
        {
            new SelectListItem { Value = "AF", Text = "Afghanistan" },
            new SelectListItem { Value = "US", Text = "United States" },
            new SelectListItem { Value = "FR", Text = "France" },
        };

        // Preselect the option with Value = "US"
        // Make sure you have such option in the Countries list
        model.SelectedCountryCode = "US";
        return View(model);
    }
}

View (~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml):

@model CountriesViewModel

@Html.DropDownListFor(
    x => x.SelectedCountryCode,
    Model.Countries, 
    "Select Country"
)

Result: