Question

Just starting out using MVC3 and hit a problem trying to build a drop-down in a view.
The ViewModel is populated with a SelectList of items:

mdm.CaptionSetList=new SelectList(CaptionSet.Fetch(), "CaptionSetId", "Description")

which then is used in the view:

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Entity.CaptionSetId, model.CaptionSetList) 

but when the page is hit, the line is highlighted with the compiler message:

Compiler Error Message: CS0103: The name ‘model’ does not exist in the current context

What’s the beginner’s mistake I’m making?

Answer 1

The first argument for DropDownListFor is a function so that part is right, but the second part is just expecting a SelectList so all you need to do is

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Entity.CaptionSetId, Model.CaptionSetList) 

Note the capitalization.

Further clarification

In a strongly typed view Model is a property that refers to the model bound to the view. Since the second argument is just expecting a list and you’ve specified that the Model has a property called CaptionSetList, You specify the list as Model.CaptionSetList. If you had put the list in the ViewBag, you would put ViewBag.CaptionSetList.

Contrast this to the first argument which is a function that takes one argument of the same type as the model.