Question

Having created dropdown lists using ViewBag which is working in an edit form. How would you add a “select from list” on the dropdown, at present it displays a blank space?
Where to put the “select from list” – controller or view.

Answer 1

There’s an overload of the DropDownList/DropDownListFor helper which allows you to add a default value:

@Html.DropDownListFor(
    x => x.SelectedId,
    (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewBag.Items, // <= yuck, use a view model instead of ViewBag/ViewCrap
    "select from list"
)