Question

I have this “problem” that i have code like this in many of my controller actions:

var users = new List<SelectListItem>();
foreach(var user in userRepository.GetAll())
{
 var item = new SelectListItem { Text = user.FriendlyName, Value = user.UserId.ToString() };

 if (User.Identity.Name == user.UserName)
  item.Selected = true;

 users.Add(item);
}

ViewData["Users"] = users;

How would you refactor this to a more clean solution? I want to get DRY!

Answer 1

I would create this to be an extension method applied to List<user> or whatever your userRepository.GetAll() returns so then in your code you can replace all of these usages with just

ViewData["Users"] = userRepository.GetAll().ToSelectList();

Edit code sample: There’s 2 ways you could do this

public static List<SelectListItem> ToSelectList(this List<Agent> users)
{
    List<SelectListItem> items = new List<int>();
    foreach (var user in users)
    {
        var item = new SelectListItem { Text = user.FriendlyName, 
                                Value = user.UserId.ToString() };

        if (User.Identity.Name == user.UserName)
            item.Selected = true;

        items.Add(item);
    }

    return items;
}

And usage would be like

userRepository.GetAll().ToSelectList();

Or if you have problems with identity being in the extension method have

public static List<SelectListItem> ToSelectList(this List<Agent> users, 
                                                        string selectedUserName)
{
    List<SelectListItem> items = new List<int>();
    foreach (var user in users)
    {
        var item = new SelectListItem { Text = user.FriendlyName, 
                                Value = user.UserId.ToString() };

        if (user.UserName == selectedUserName)
            item.Selected = true;

        items.Add(item);
    }

    return items;
}

And usage would be like

userRepository.GetAll().ToSelectList(User.Identity.Name);