Question

I have an editor template with a dropdown:

 @Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.AdmissionState, new List<SelectListItem>()
                                                   {
                                                       new SelectListItem()
                                                           {
                                                               Text = "1",
                                                               Value = "1"
                                                           },
                                                       new SelectListItem()
                                                           {
                                                               Text = "2",
                                                               Value = "2"
                                                           },
                                                       new SelectListItem()
                                                           {
                                                               Text = "3",
                                                               Value = "3"
                                                           },                   
                                                   }, "- Select -")

I call it from the view:

@Html.EditorFor(m => m.Licenses)

In controller I have following code:

profile.Licenses.Add(new AttorneyLicenseModel()
        {
            AdmissionDate = "06/14/2012",
            AdmissionState = "2",
            AdmissionNumber = "asd",
        });
        profile.Licenses.Add(new AttorneyLicenseModel()
        {
            AdmissionDate = "07/16/2012",
            AdmissionState = "5",
            AdmissionNumber = "qwe",
        });

For each of the licenses I see the fields with a data populated from the model, but not for the dropdown list – there is default value is checked. What am I doing wrong? ofcourse, the code with values is extremely simlified

Answer 1

Try like this:

@Html.DropDownListFor(
    m => m.AdmissionState, 
    new SelectList(
        new[] 
        {
            new { Value = "1", Text = "1" },
            new { Value = "2", Text = "2" },
            new { Value = "3", Text = "3" },
        }, 
        "Value", 
        "Text", 
        Model.AdmissionState
    ),
    "- Select -"
)

And if you are interested in understanding why my code works and yours not you could read the following answer I provided yesterday to a similar question: ASP.NET MVC DropDownListFor not selecting value from model