Question

I’m passing List<SelectListItem> to the view via ViewBag. The dropdown for “Groups” appears but the “Organizations” label and drop down doesn’t appear.

I want to show an empty dropdown control if the viewbag doesn’t contain any groups/org.

What might be happening that’s not making the 2nd label and dropdown appear?

<div class="editor-label">
    @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Group)
</div>
@{
    var groupList = ViewBag.Group as List<Helpdesk.Models.GroupModel>;

    if (groupList != null && groupList.Count > 0)
    {
        var groupItems = new SelectList(groupList, "ID", "Name");

        <div class="dropdown-field">
            @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Group.ID, @groupItems)
            @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Group.ID)
        </div>                        
    }
    else { <select /> }                 
}
<div class="editor-label">
    @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Organization)
</div>
@{
    var orgList = ViewBag.OrgList as List<Helpdesk.Models.OrganizationsModel>;

    if (orgList != null && orgList.Count > 0)
    {
        var orgItems = new SelectList(orgList, "ID", "Name");

        <div class="dropdown-field">
            @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Organization.ID, @orgItems)
            @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Organization.ID)
        </div> 
    }
    else { <select /> }
}

Answer 1

Why don’t you do this:

if (orgList != null && orgList.Count > 0)
{
    var orgItems = new SelectList(orgList, "ID", "Name");

    <div class="dropdown-field">
        @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Organization.ID, @orgItems)
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Organization.ID)
    </div> 
}
else { 
    @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Organization.ID, new SelectListItem[] { })
}

Push an empty array of items, instead of displaying an empty select element.