Question

I am new with MVC I am trying to create a small product form with TextBox and DropDownList field, I have created a Class in Model with personName, productName. I have only 5 Products so I don’t want to use db for it.

I tried all that I can by doing google but still not able to get my dropdown list

Thanks

Answer 1

Assuming you have a PersonsProduct class to represent your model/viewmodel like this

public class PersonsProduct
{

    public string PersonName { set;get;}
    public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Products { get; set; }
    public string SelectedProductId { get; set; }
    //Other Properties
}

In your GET action method, you may initialize the values like this

public ActionResult AddProduct()
{
    var objProduct = new PersonsProduct();
    objProduct.Products = new[]
    {
          new SelectListItem { Value = "1", Text = "Book" },
          new SelectListItem { Value = "2", Text = "Pen" },
          new SelectListItem { Value = "3", Text = "Computer" },
          new SelectListItem { Value = "4", Text = "Table" },
          new SelectListItem { Value = "5", Text = "Mouse" }
    };
    // can replace the above line with loading data from Data access layer.
    return View(objProduct);
}

And in your View which is strongly typed to PersonsProduct viewmodel

@model PersonsProduct 
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{ 
  @Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedProductId, new SelectList(Model.Products ,"Value","Text"), "Select..")
  <input type="submit" value="save" />
}

And in your HTTPPost action, you can get the selected productId like this

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(PersonsProduct model)
{
 //  check model.SelectedProductId here

}

NEVER HARDCODE LIKE THIS. It is UGLY UGLY UGLY !

This answers your question (without using Database and XML). But I strongly recommend to avoid this hardcoding approach. You should better use different source for the list of products like database / XML file etc.. Otherwise whenever you want to add a new product to the list, you need a recompilation. I hope you will change this code to read Product data from a different source instead of hard coded values.