So I'm trying to stylize the tag in a dropdown. My MVC helper is set up kind of like this but the real thing pulls from the DB, so the data is not hard coded.
@{
List<string> ListOfText = new List<string> { "FirstThing","SecondThing","ThirdThing"};
List<string> ListOfValue = new List<string> { "1","2","3"};
List<SelectListItems> ListOFSELCETLISTITEMS = new List<SelectListItem>();
for (int x = 0; x < 3; x++)
{
ListOFSELCETLISTITEMS .Add(new SelectListItem
{
Text = ListOfText[x],
Value = ListOfValue[x],
Selected = (selectedValue == ListOfValue[x])
});
}
}
@Html.DropDown("NAME",ListOFSELCETLISTITEMS)
This gives me something like
<select id="Name" name="Name">
<option value="1">FirstThing</option>
<option value="2">SecondThing</option>
<option value="3">ThirdThing</option>
</select>
What i need is something like this
<select id="Name" name="Name">
<option value="1" class="option1">FirstThing</option>
<option value="2" class="option2">SecondThing</option>
<option value="3" class="option3">ThirdThing</option>
</select>
I've tried doing things like
@{
List<string> ListOfText = new List<string> { "FirstThing","SecondThing","ThirdThing"};
List<string> ListOfValue = new List<string> { "1","2","3"};
}
<select id="Name" name="Name">
@ for (int x = 0; x < 3; x++)
{
<text>
<option value="@ListOfValue[x]" @{if(selectedValue == ListOfValue[x])
{ @Html.Raw("selected='selected'") }}
@class = '@Html.Raw("option"+x)'>
@ListOfText[x]
</option>
</text>
}
</select>
But this seems to confuse the controller and it doesn't recognize that the dropdown's value above maps to
public ActionResult method(string Name)
in the controller on a post or get. Well the line
@Html.DropDown("NAME",ListOFSELCETLISTITEMS)
in the view does allow the controller to understand the method should map to that dropdown's value.
How can i do this? Is there a way to unconfuse the controller and be able to hand write HTML without the Html.helpers?
To render directly a controller action, you can try :
@{ Html.RenderAction(Action, Controller); }
To invoke your controller action that should be returning a string with your content.
[HttpGet]
public string Action(int id)
{
return your context in here
}
However I think it's cleaner to add an Ajax action returning the data for building the select and after having the results, using jquery solution for adding a class (which can be returned in the AJAX response itself)
EDIT: clarification:
Assuming you've got a collection of Item as follows:
class Item {
public int Value { get; set; }
public string CssClass { get; set; }
public string Description{ get; set; }
}
private const string EMPTY_OPTION = "<option value=''></option>";
[HttpGet]
public string Action(int id)
{
// Load a collection with all your option's related data
IQueryable data = LoadSomethingFromDbOrWherever(id);
// Build output
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.AppendFormat("<select id='foo' name='foo'>");
sb.AppendFormat(EMPTY_OPTION);
foreach (Item b in data)
{
sb.AppendFormat("<option value='{0}' class='{1}'>{2}</option>",
b.Value, b.CssClass, b.Description);
}
sb.AppendFormat("</select>");
return sb.ToString();
}
for ajax option:
[HttpGet]
public JsonResult Action(int id)
{
//same as above, obtain a collection
// Load a collection with all your option's related data
IQueryable data = LoadSomethingFromDbOrWherever(id);
var jsonData = new
{
from c in data
select new
{
Value= c.Value,
CssClass = c.CssClass,
Description = c.Desription
}).ToArray()
};
return Json(jsonData);
}
Call this via $.ajax and in the callback you'll have a javascript object containing all your data, then use jQuery to build up the select options.
Regards
With jquery you can try something like this:
$('#Name option').each(function(){
var i = $(this).attr('value');
$(this).addClass('option'+i);
});
(I am still a newbie in jquery, but I tried this and it worked)
EDIT: My previous post was linking to incorrect code.
I would suggest that you create your own HTML Helper extension method. This is how I had done it in the past, unfortunately I don't have the code to hand to show an example.
You basically need to create a method that takes your parameters and returns a htmlstring
you would end up replacing
@Html.DropDown("NAME",ListOFSELCETLISTITEMS)
with something like
@Html.MyDropDown("NAME",ListOFSELCETLISTITEMS)
where you are looping the list and creating a correctly formatted html string to return, then you can add as much extra attributes as you want