C# MVC Display Drop down list from viewmodel in razor

Question

So i have a viewmodel that contains a list of tags List<Tag> tags {get; set;}

public class BlogVM
    {
        public List<Blog> Blogs { get; set; }
        public List<Tag> Tags { get; set; }
    }



private EFMTMContext db = new EFMTMContext();

        // GET: /Blog/
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            BlogVM viewModel = new BlogVM();

            viewModel.Blogs = db.Blogs.ToList();
            viewModel.Tags = db.Tags.ToList();

            return View(viewModel);
        }

the database of tags is stored into the viewModel.Tags and passed into the view.

The problem I am having is displaying them with the Html.DropDownList. what is displayed is

EFTest.EntityFramwork.Tag, EFTest.EntityFramwork.Tag, EFTest.EntityFramwork.Tag.

(Namespace.Folder.Tag) I was expecting the dropdownlist to populate

Football, Rugby, Tennis etc

@model EFManyToManyTest.ViewModels.BlogVM
@Html.DropDownList("tags", new SelectList(Model.Tags), "---", false)

What is the right way of accessing each of the tags from the viewmodel?

Hopefully someone can help. Thanks!

Thought I'd add, i can loop through the contents of Model.Tags using,

@foreach (var item in Model.Tags)
{
    @item.Name
}

no problem. This works, it's just the dropdownlist that doesnt

This now works using

public class Tag
    {
        public int **TagID** { get; set; }
        public string **Name** { get; set; }
        public List<Blog> Blogs { get; set; }
    }

@Html.DropDownList("tags", new SelectList(Model.Tags, **"TagID"**, **"Name"**), "---", false)

TagID because that's the ID property in the class definition

Zabavsky · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-14 16:38:59Z

1

You didn't specify value and text fields, take a look at this constructor of the SelectList:

public SelectList(
    IEnumerable items,
    string dataValueField,
    string dataTextField
)

For instance

@Html.DropDownList("tags", new SelectList(Model.Tags, "Id", "Name"), "---", false)

answered Sep 14, 2014 at 16:38

Zabavsky

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1 Comment

Ultigma Over a year ago

Works perfectly. I really need to try and learn how to understand the MSDN documentation. Find it really hard to understand if there are no examples along side it.

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