Question

So I took some advice to create a DropDownListFor element in my view, which meant to create a model view called

MODEL
class StudentModelView.

I have two properties.

StudentID{get;set;}
IEnumerable<SelectListItem> SelectPeopleList { get;set;}

I get the list to populate nicely with this code

VIEW

    @Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.StudentID, Model.SelectPeopleList,"--Select Students--", new Dictionary<string,object>{ {"class","dropdowns"},{"id","selectPeopleDDL"}})  

//NEED A BUTTON TO SUBMIT 

CONTROLLER

 public ActionResult Index()
        {


            return View(new StudentModelView());
        }  

1. What kind of button do I need to make it post
2. After posting, how do I update my view to show the new filtered list? Am I missing a POST controller or just ajax? What’s the best approach?

Answer 1

You could do it all using jquery, but here is couple of pointers:

You should wrap your filter in a form:

@using (Html.BeginForm("Home", "Index", FormMethod.Get))
{
  @Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.StudentID, Model.SelectPeopleList,"--Select Students--", new Dictionary<string,object>{ {"class","dropdowns"},{"id","selectPeopleDDL"}})
  <input type="submit" value="Go" />
}

the submit button is not a must, you could just use jquery to submit whenever the value of the dropdown changes

in your controller:

public ActionMethod Index(int? studentID)
{
  var model = new StudentModelView 
  {
    StudentId = studentID, 
    SelectPeopleList=GetListFiltered(studentId)  
  }

  return(model);
}