Question

I’m trying to read some data in as Json, deserialize it, and display it in my view in a DropDownList. The data looks like this:

{
  "products": [
    {
      "body_html": "<p> ....</p>",
      "created_at": "2012-09-19T11:55:44-04:00",
      ...
      "tags": "Emotive, Flash Memory, MP3, Music",
      "variants": [
        {
          "compare_at_price": null,
          "created_at": "2012-09-19T11:55:44-04:00",
          ...
          "inventory_quantity": 10
        }
      ],
      "images": [
        {
          "created_at": "2012-09-19T11:55:44-04:00",
          "id": 850703190,
          ...
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

I’ve tried a few different things which haven’t worked. Right now I have in my controller:

var data = Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject.Parse(productsJson.ToString())["products"];
SelectList productsData = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<SelectList>(data.ToString());
ViewData["products"] = productsData;

And in the view:

@Html.DropDownList("ProductList", (SelectList)ViewData["products"])

Presently I’m getting the following error:

Cannot create and populate list type System.Web.Mvc.SelectList.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of
the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more
information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot create and
populate list type System.Web.Mvc.SelectList.

Help is appreciated.

Answer 1

First, you should parse json to your product type then you may use like this:

var products = new SelectList(parsedProductList,"valueField here", "textField here");