How can bind a Dropdownlist in MVC and use selected value?

If you have been a ASP.Net programmer and now you decided to move to MVC this post can help you to find out how populate a Dropdownlist and how use selected value when the form is posted to the controller.

What is scenario?

I have this table in the database, as you see here, this table contains student’s information, I need a Dropdownlist in the form for list of available programs that user can select for each students.

In this function I created a list that contains program information (value, text), then I wanted to assign it to the DropDownlist:

public ActionResult Create()
        {

            IEnumerable<SelectListItem> ProgramList= new[]
            {

        new SelectListItem { Value = "1", Text = "bachelor" },
        new SelectListItem { Value = "2", Text = "Master" },
        new SelectListItem { Value = "3", Text = "PHD" },

            };

           ViewBag.List = ProgramList;
            return View();
        }

After that you need to make a view base on Student class, because we need to use ProgramId to post back a selected program’s Id and other student information to the controller that want to save data.
Here I just show you how to create a DropDownlist and I ignore other student’s fields:

<form method="post" action="students/create">
 @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.ProgramId, new SelectList(ViewBag.List, "Value", "Text"))
  <input type="submit" />
  </form>

I am sure that this post it is not clear for those programmer that are new in MVC , therefore if you need more help , just leave comment here then I will help you to improve your knowledge in MVC and also I can help you to find good reference to learn MVC 🙂