Question

I have a model which has a collection of users. I’m looping through this collection to generate a table of users. One of the options in the table is to change the user’s role, which is an enum property of the user object. Currently I have the following code:

@foreach (var user in Model.Users) 
{ 
    <tr>
        ...
        <td>
            <form action="@Url.Action("UpdateRole", "Admin", new { id = user.Id })" class="inline">
                @Html.DropDownList("Role", Model.GetRoles())
            </form>                    
        </td>
        ...
    </tr>
}

The problem with this code is that the generated drop down list is unaware of the actual value of the property on the user object. However, I see no overload for the DropDownList method that accepts a value to use for the selected value. The DropDownListFor method does, but it appears to operate directly on the model, and I can’t figure out a way to pass it the type of the nested user object. Can this be done?

Answer 1

You can use SelectList [1] which has an override for the selected value, e.g.:

@Html.DropDownList("Role", new SelectList(Model.GetRoles(), "selectedValueHere"))