Question

I want to add another dropdownlist. The below code works for one dropdown, but how would I add one for Categories?

public  ActionResult Create()
        {
            var ddl = new Users();
            ddl.DropDowns = userRepository.Getddl("Departments").Select(c => new SelectListItem
                                                                    {
                                                                        Value = c.DropdownID.ToString(),
                                                                        Text = c.DropdownText
                                                                    });


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

            return View(ddl);
        }

Answer 1

Try to avoid the ViewData approach.Switch to Strongly typed way of doing this. Add another property to your View Model to carry one more dropdown items

public class User
{
  public int SelectedCountry { set;get;}
  public int SelectedProfile { set;get;}
  public List<SelectListItem> Countries  {set;get;}
  public List<SelectListItem> Profiles {set;get;}

  public User()
  {
     Countries =new List<SelectListItem>(); 
     Profiles =new List<SelectListItem>(); 
  }
}

Now set the collection in your GET action

public ActionResult Create()
{
  var vm=new User();
  vm.Countries=GetCountryItems();
  vm.Profiles=GetProfileItems();  
  return View(vm);
}

Where GetCountryItems and GetProfileItems are 2 methods which returns a list of SelectListItem objects for countries and Profiles from db.

Do not make your controllers FAT. Just keep it simple and clean. Move away your code which fetch data from repository to a different layer. Easy to read and maintain 🙂

And in your strongly typed view,

@mode User
@using(Html.BeginForm())
{
  @Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedCountry,
                     new SelectList(Model.Countries, "Value", "Text"), "Select")
  @Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedProfile,
                     new SelectList(Model.Profiles, "Value", "Text"), "Select")
 <input type="submit" />
}