Question

On an HTML form I have various controls bound to a Parent entity and 2 Child entities (both one-to-one) required dependent.

When submitting the from [POST] the values persist fine for all controls bound to the Parent, and for all “text” type controls bound to the Child entities, but Child fields bound to dropdown controls are not persisting.

I’ve looked at the HTML source and found that the name and id tags are constructed differently for the controls, as a result the keys in the submitted form will be incorrect for all fields bound to a dropdown control.

Here are two example controls from the form with Parent table “Counterparty” and Child “CounterpartyFinancial”

Textarea control: value changes persist ok:
<textarea id="CounterpartyFinancial_WebAddress" name="CounterpartyFinancial.WebAddress">

Combo control: value changes don’t persist:
<select id="FinancialsSourceId" name="FinancialsSourceId">

The dropdown is constructed with

1) A SelectList in the Controller:

ViewBag.FinancialsSourceId = new SelectList(db.FinancialsSources, "FinancialsSourceId", "Name", counterparty.CounterpartyFinancial.FinancialsSourceId);

and

2) The DropDownList Helper in the view

@Html.DropDownList("FinancialsSourceId", String.Empty)

The control does reflect the correct value from the database.

Should I be using overrides in the dropdown helper, or is it more likely incorrect config/definition back up the line?

Thanks

Answer 1

I resolved this using the @Html.DropdownListFor helper

@Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SomePropertyOnModel, (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewBag.Clients);

suggested by DavidAndroidDev here