Question

I have a property in my model very simple one:

Now this dropDown doesn’t work right

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.Camp, new SelectList(ViewBag.Camps, "Id", "Name"))

it returns null instead of a chosen Camp, but if I change that into:

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.Camp.Id, new SelectList(ViewBag.Camps, "Id", "Name"))

It would return me a Camp object with correct Id, but the Name would be still null.

Why?

UPD:

And now another problem is if I choose the second approach it would screw up with unobtrusive validation. Although I’ll be able to get the right camp based on the chosen id.

Answer 1

That’s normal. Only the Id is posted to the controller action. That’s how dropdown inside forms work. So that’s all you can hope to get there. You will then use this Id to get the corresponding Camp object from the database:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Foo([Bind(Prefix = "Camp")]int id)
{
    Camp camp = Repository.GetCamp(id);
    ...
}

Also please get rid of this ViewBag and use a real view model:

public class CampViewModel
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Camps { get; set; }
}

and in the controller:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    var model = new CampViewModel
    {
        Camps = Repository.GetCamps().Select(x => new SelectListItem
        {
            Value = x.Id.ToString(),
            Text = x.Name
        })
    };
    return View(model);
}

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(int id)
{
    Camp camp = Repository.GetCamp(id);
    ...
}

and the view:

@model CampViewModel
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    @Html.DropDownListFor(
        x => x.Id,
        new SelectList(Model.Camps, "Value", "Text")
    )
    <input type="submit" value="OK" />
}