Question

Is there any better approach than what I am currently doing here:
MVC Controller action creates a select list as:

 ProductsDDL.Select(rp => new SelectListItem 
{ Value = Model.RawMaterialID.ToString() + "," + plant, Text = Model.FinishedProductName });

And HTML rendered as:
        <select id="Products" name="Products">
        <option value="3,PLANT1">Finished Product1</option>
        <option value="4,PLANT2">Finished Product2</option>
        <option value="7,PLANT3">Finished Product3</option>
        </select>

On selection change, I use Jquery $.GetJSON to populate another drop down list. The reason I am concatinating PlantID with RawMaterialID is to avoid long query processing time.
On Post to action(string RawIDPlantID), I use Split(‘,’) to get RewMaterialID & PlantID

Other options are to use session to hold PlantID or input hidden field in MVC view.

Answer 1

I typically stay away from using commas as a delimiter in values that represent a single entity, and save the commas delimiting a list of multiple ids. In cases such as yours, I end up using an underscore. Then, should I need to comma separate a list of the IDs, it’s easier on the eyes and to parse. But that’s completely subjective and up to you, as the developer.

For example

3_PLANT1,4_PLANT2,7_PLANT3

is easier to eyeball

3,PLANT1,4,PLANT2,7,PLANT3

And that was as much criticism as I could muster about your code. The rest of it I’d use, and have used in the past.