Question

I have a function that fills creates dropdownlist in ASP.NET MVC.

 public static MvcHtmlString countryDropDown(this HtmlHelper helper, string name, string optionLabel, object selectedValue)
    {
        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.Load(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/countries.xml"));

        StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder();

        b.Append(string.Format("<select name=\"{0}\" id=\"{0}\">", name));
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(optionLabel))
            b.Append(string.Format("<option value=\"\">{0}</option>", optionLabel));

        foreach (XmlNode node in doc.SelectNodes("//country"))
        {
            string selected = string.Empty;
            if (node.Attributes["name"].Value == selectedValue as string)
            {
                selected = "selected=\"selected\"";
            }
            b.Append(string.Format("<option value=\"{0}\" {2}>{1}</option>", node.Attributes["name"].Value, node.Attributes["name"].Value, selected));
        }
        b.Append("</select>");

        return MvcHtmlString.Create( b.ToString());
    }

I use this function in Create and Edit views as:

  @Html.countryDropDown("Country"," ", ViewData["Country"])

It shows list of countries perfectly but the problem is that I never selects the saved value in Edit page.
How the code can be modified so that it can select the value in edit page.

Answer 1

Solved using

 @Html.countryDropDown("Country"," ", ViewData.Eval("Country"))

instead of

 @Html.countryDropDown("Country"," ", ViewData["Country"]