Multiple Dropdown Lists, Same Items, Different Selected Item

Question

MVC, ASP.NET 6.0 Core, Entity Framework

For this example, I have a list of spices in the ViewBag. For each item in Model, generate a dropdown list with the list of spices. The default selected spice should be @item.SpiceId.

I don't understand where to add the logic that says "if the SpiceId is this item in the SelectList, select the item".

I've been searching, but I seem to only come across answers for cascading dropdown lists or multiple-select dropdown lists, not for the same dropdown list being populated with different selected items.

The View:

<table>  
        <tr>  
            <th>Spice</th>  
            <th>Price</th>  
            <th>Nice</th>  
        </tr>  
        @foreach (var item in Model)  
        {  
            <tr>  
                <td>  
                    <select asp-items="ViewBag.SpiceList"></select>  
                </td>  
                <td>@item.Price</td>  
                <td>@item.Nice</td>  
            </tr>  
        }  
    </table>  

The Controller:

var spicesList = _context.Spices.ToList();  
ViewBag.SpiceList = new SelectList(spicesList , "SpiceId", "SpiceName");  
return View(spicesList);  

The desired outcome: (each dropdown list populated with @item.SpiceId)

What it's doing instead: (because I don't know where to set the selectedItem)

Answer 1

Hi @Anna Tamaoka ,

For this example, I have a list of spices in the ViewBag. For each item in Model, generate a dropdown list with the list of spices. The default selected spice should be @item.SpiceId.

I don't understand where to add the logic that says "if the SpiceId is this item in the SelectList, select the item".

To set the default selected spices, you could add a "SelectSpiceId" property in the Spice class, then when bind the select tag, you could add an asp-for attribute specifies the SelectSpiceId property and set the default selected value. Like this:

    <select asp-for="@Model[i].SelectSpiceId"  class=" form-select" asp-items="ViewBag.SpiceList"></select>  

You could refer the following sample:

Model:

Repository: test data

Controller:

View page:

You can view the above source code from here: 191748-source-code.txt

Then, the result like this:

---

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Best regards,
Dillion