MVC 4 DropDownListFor Set Selected Item Based on Text

Question

Normally when I use the DropDownListFor helper I'm selecting which item is selected based on an ID (int), but now I have a situation where I need to display which item is selected based on the text (string) and not an ID. In the controller the model is being set correctly to the value that I want with this property:

model.Title

An example title would be "Front Office". I have the following code in my Controller:

ViewBag.Titles = new SelectList(jobTitles, "Name", "Name");

and on the view I have this:

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Title, ViewBag.Titles as SelectList)

The DropDownList is populating correctly with all the expected job titles, it just isn't selecting the correct job title based on model.Title. What am I doing wrong?

UPDATE:

There seems to be something else potentially going wrong in my code, so I'm putting all of it here to see if I'm doing something wrong.

Controller:

public ActionResult Edit(int id = 0)
    {
        StaffMember staffmember = StaffMember.SelectByID(id); // gets staff member from db

        ViewBag.Titles = new SelectList(JobTitle.SelectAll(), "Name", "Name", staffmember.Title); // JobTitle.SelectAll() returns List<JobTitle>

        StaffEditModel model = new StaffEditModel();
        model.ID = staffmember.ID;
        model.ClientID = staffmember.ClientID;
        model.FirstName = staffmember.FirstName;
        model.MiddleInitial = staffmember.MiddleInitial;
        model.LastName = staffmember.LastName;
        model.Title = staffmember.Title;
        model.Phone = staffmember.Phone;
        model.Email = staffmember.Email;
        model.Birthday = staffmember.Birthday;
        model.HireDate = staffmember.HireDate;
        model.Biography = staffmember.Biography;

        if (staffmember == null)
        {
            return HttpNotFound();
        }
        return View(model);
    }

Model:

public class StaffEditModel
{
    public int ID { get; set; }

    public int ClientID { get; set; }

    [Required]
    [Display(Name = "First Name")]
    public string FirstName { get; set; }

    [Display(Name = "Middle Initial")]
    public string MiddleInitial { get; set; }

    [Required]
    [Display(Name = "Last Name")]
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    public string Title { get; set; } // this is the property I'm trying to show in DropDown

    [DisplayFormat(ApplyFormatInEditMode = true, DataFormatString = "{0:MM/dd/yyyy}")]
    public string Birthday { get; set; }

    [Display(Name = "Hire Date")]
    [DisplayFormat(ApplyFormatInEditMode = true, DataFormatString = "{0:MM/dd/yyyy}")]
    public string HireDate { get; set; }

    public string Email { get; set; }

    [MaxLength(14)]
    public string Phone { get; set; }
    public string Biography { get; set; }
}

View:

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Title, new SelectList(ViewBag.Titles,"Value","Text", Model.Title))

Does your JobTitle.SelectAll() returns List<string>? Or another type of object? — Paritosh

Paritosh Paritosh · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-22T15:07:55

This should work. You can pass ViewBag.Titles as List<SelectListItem> from controller

var jobList = new List<SelectListItem>();
foreach (var job in jobTitles)
{
    var item = new SelectListItem();
    item.Value = job.PropertyName; //the property you want to display i.e. Title
    item.Text = job.PropertyName;
    jobList.Add(item);
}
ViewBag.Title = jobList;

and then in the view,

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.Title, new SelectList(ViewBag.Titles,"Value","Text", Model.Title))

MVC 4 DropDownListFor Set Selected Item Based on Text

2 Answers