Question

I have a form in an ASP.NET MVC project which has a select drop down list akin to the following:

<select>
  <option value="ee5711b9-ec86-4378-a975-ae10a4ebedbc">Volvo Account</option>
  <option value="0dc0e9d8-2245-43de-81a9-5b94c19646fa">Saab Account</option>
  <option value="f9a05ef6-9ca6-4eeb-9e04-79726a62b38c">Mercedes Account</option>
  <option value="1c5c2e43-06d6-4b7d-916a-231be535a608">Audi Account</option>
</select>

In a later page in the project I need to do something with the GUID identifier, but first I need to prompt the user for confirmation. Obviously the GUID is useless to them and they’d like to see the friendlier name (i.e., “Volvo Account”).

But when I drill into the FormCollection values, all I can get is the value, not the text of the selected option This makes sense given the design goals, but how can I also POST over the text value?

I can think of some workarounds (setting a hidden field with JavaScript, doing a lookup after the fact with the GUID and the same method by which I populated this, etc.) but is there any intrinisc way to do this I’m missing?

Answer 1

There’s no intrinsic way to do this, JavaScript is really your best option.

Add an “onchange” event handler to your SELECT that sets the value of a hidden input to the display value of the selected OPTION.