Question

yeah 🙁 simple question * blush *

Lets imagine i have the following enumeration:-

string[] languages = new string[]                      {                          'en (uk)', // English (colour)                          'en (us)', // English (color)                          'fr', // French                          'es' // Spanish                      };  ViewData['Languages'] = languages; ViewData['UserLanguage'] = 'en (uk)'; 

Armed with this, how would i display a radio button in the View? Is the only way to do this to enumerate through all the language values and render a RadioBox?

eg. pseduo-code…

<% foreach(string language in ViewData['Languages'] as string[]) {   response.write Html.RadioBox(... not sure what to set in here ...) }%> 

cheers!

Answer 1

Quick and dirty:

<% foreach(string language in ViewData['Languages'] as string[]) { %>   <%= Html.RadioBox(language,language,language == ViewData['UserLanguage'].ToString()) %> <% } %> 

The problem is that you have allot of magic strings in that viewdata. What I would do is something like this:

1. Create a class: UserForm

   class UserForm {       IList<string> _languages;      string _selectedL;       public UserForm (IList<string> languages, string selectedLanguage)      {        _languages = languages;        _selectedL = selectedLanguage;      }       IEnumerable<SelectedListItem> UserLanguages {          get {               return from l in _languages                       select new SelectedListItem {                           Text = l,                           Value = l,                           Selected = (l == _selectedL)                       };          }      } } 

2. the view should be strongly typed and be of type : UserForm then you could render it like :

   <%= Html.RadioButtonList('userLanguages',ViewData.Model.UserLanguages) %> 

3. From the controller you would :

   return View(new UserForm(listOfLanguages, selectedLanguage)); 

HTH.

EDIT: OK, found it – the RadioButtonList is an extension method in the Microsoft.Web.Mvc namespace (the MVCFutures project) – you can get it from here : MVCFutures