Question

I have an dropdownlist like so:

@Html.DropDownList("DeliveryOptions",
(IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewData["DeliveryOptions"])

This gets its data from the controller action like so:

var options = context.DeliveryTypes.Where(x => x.EnquiryID == enqId);
ViewData["DeliveryOptions"] = new SelectList(options, "DeliveryTypeId", 
"CODE" + " - " + "DeliveryPrice");

I’d like to have my dropdownlist display the CODE + DeliveryPrice in its text field, for example: ‘TNTAM – 17.54’ but I get the following error:

DataBinding: 'MyApp.Models.DeliveryTypes' does not contain a property 
with the name 'CODE - DeliveryPrice'.

My DeliveryType Model looks like so:

[Key]
public int DeliveryTypeId { get; set; }
public string CODE { get; set; }
public decimal DeliveryPrice { get; set; }

Answer 1

You could use an anonymous type:

var options = context.DeliveryTypes
    .Where(x => x.EnquiryID == enqId)
    .Select(x => new { Value = x.DeliveryTypeId, Text = x.CODE + " - " + x.DeliveryPrice });

ViewData["DeliveryOptions"] = new SelectList(options, "Value", "Text");

Or alternatively create a specific CustomSelectListItem class which you can reuse, which contains Value and Text properties which you can reuse for such occasions as this.