Question

I have a database table called Genre with the following fields:

• Id (Seeded Primary Key)
• Name (Name of Genre – Romance, Western, etc…)

I have a Model class called GenreDropDownModel which contains teh following code:

public class GenreDropDownModel
{
    private StoryDBEntities storyDB = new StoryDBEntities();

    public Dictionary<int,string> genres { get; set; }

    public GenreDropDownModel()
    {
        genres = new Dictionary<int,string>();

        foreach (var genre in storyDB.Genres)
        {
            genres.Add(genre.Id, genre.Name);
        }
    }

}

My Controller Write action is declared as:

  public ActionResult Write()
  {
      return View(new GenreDropDownModel());
  }

Finally, my view Write.cshtml is where I get the following error:

DataBinding: ‘System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair`2[[System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]]’ does not contain a property with the name ‘Id’.

@model Stories.Models.GenreDropDownModel

@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Write";
}

<h2>Write</h2>

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.genres,new SelectList(Model.genres,"Id","Name"))

Answer 1

Since Model.genres is a dictionary, you should do this with

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.genres,new SelectList(Model.genres,"Key","Value"))

This is because when enumerated, an IDictionary<TKey, TValue> produces an enumeration of KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>. That’s the type you need to look at to see how the properties are named.