Cascading drop-downs in MVC 3 Razor view

Question

I am interested in how to implement cascading dropdown lists for addresses in a Razor view. My Site entity has a SuburbId property. Suburb has a CityId, and City has ProvinceId. I would like to display dropdowns for all of Suburb, City, and Province on the Site view, where e.g. the suburb dropdown will initially display "First select a City", and the City dropdown, "First select a province". On selecting a province, cities in the province are populated etc.

How can I achieve this? Where do I start?

Answer 1

be aware, that this solution doesn't work directly with EF 4.0. It causes "A circular reference was detected while serializing..." error. Here are possible solutions http://blogs.telerik.com/atanaskorchev/posts/10-01-25/resolving_circular_references_when_binding_the_mvc_grid.aspx , I've used second one.

Answer 2

Let's illustrate with an example. As always start with a model:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public string SelectedProvinceId { get; set; }
    public string SelectedCityId { get; set; }
    public string SelectedSuburbId { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<Province> Provinces { get; set; }
}

public class Province
{
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

Next a controller:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        var model = new MyViewModel
        {
            // TODO: Fetch those from your repository
            Provinces = Enumerable.Range(1, 10).Select(x => new Province
            {
                Id = (x + 1).ToString(),
                Name = "Province " + x
            })
        };
        return View(model);
    }

    public ActionResult Suburbs(int cityId)
    {
        // TODO: Fetch the suburbs from your repository based on the cityId
        var suburbs = Enumerable.Range(1, 5).Select(x => new
        {
            Id = x,
            Name = "suburb " + x
        });
        return Json(suburbs, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }

    public ActionResult Cities(int provinceId)
    {
        // TODO: Fetch the cities from your repository based on the provinceId
        var cities = Enumerable.Range(1, 5).Select(x => new
        {
            Id = x,
            Name = "city " + x
        });
        return Json(cities, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }
}

And finally a view:

@model SomeNs.Models.MyViewModel

@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Home Page";
}

<script type="text/javascript" src="/scripts/jquery-1.4.4.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function () {
        $('#SelectedProvinceId').change(function () {
            var selectedProvinceId = $(this).val();
            $.getJSON('@Url.Action("Cities")', { provinceId: selectedProvinceId }, function (cities) {
                var citiesSelect = $('#SelectedCityId');
                citiesSelect.empty();
                $.each(cities, function (index, city) {
                    citiesSelect.append(
                        $('<option/>')
                            .attr('value', city.Id)
                            .text(city.Name)
                    );
                });
            });
        });

        $('#SelectedCityId').change(function () {
            var selectedCityId = $(this).val();
            $.getJSON('@Url.Action("Suburbs")', { cityId: selectedCityId }, function (suburbs) {
                var suburbsSelect = $('#SelectedSuburbId');
                suburbsSelect.empty();
                $.each(suburbs, function (index, suburb) {
                    suburbsSelect.append(
                        $('<option/>')
                            .attr('value', suburb.Id)
                            .text(suburb.Name)
                    );
                });
            });
        });
    });
</script>

<div>
    Province: 
    @Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedProvinceId, new SelectList(Model.Provinces, "Id", "Name"))
</div>
<div>
    City: 
    @Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedCityId, Enumerable.Empty<SelectListItem>())
</div>
<div>
    Suburb: 
    @Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.SelectedSuburbId, Enumerable.Empty<SelectListItem>())
</div>

As an improvement the javascript code could be shortened by writing a jquery plugin to avoid duplicating some parts.

---

UPDATE:

And talking about a plugin you could have something among the lines:

(function ($) {
    $.fn.cascade = function (options) {
        var defaults = { };
        var opts = $.extend(defaults, options);

        return this.each(function () {
            $(this).change(function () {
                var selectedValue = $(this).val();
                var params = { };
                params[opts.paramName] = selectedValue;
                $.getJSON(opts.url, params, function (items) {
                    opts.childSelect.empty();
                    $.each(items, function (index, item) {
                        opts.childSelect.append(
                            $('<option/>')
                                .attr('value', item.Id)
                                .text(item.Name)
                        );
                    });
                });
            });
        });
    };
})(jQuery);

And then simply wire it up:

$(function () {
    $('#SelectedProvinceId').cascade({
        url: '@Url.Action("Cities")',
        paramName: 'provinceId',
        childSelect: $('#SelectedCityId')
    });

    $('#SelectedCityId').cascade({
        url: '@Url.Action("Suburbs")',
        paramName: 'cityId',
        childSelect: $('#SelectedSuburbId')
    });
});

Answer 3

To implement cascading drop down lists that support MVC's built in validation and binding, you will need to do something a little different than what is done in the other answers here.

If your model has validation, this will support it. An excerpt from a model with validation:

[Required]
[DisplayFormat(ConvertEmptyStringToNull = false)]    
public Guid cityId { get; set; }

In your controller you need to add a get method, so that your view will be able to get the relevant data later:

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
public JsonResult GetData(Guid id)
{
    var cityList = (from s in db.City where s.stateId == id select new { cityId = s.cityId, name = s.name }); 
    //simply grabbing all of the cities that are in the selected state 

    return Json(cityList.ToList(), JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);  
}

Now, to the View that I mentioned earlier:

In your view you have two drop downs similar to this:

<div class="editor-label">
    @Html.LabelFor(model => model.stateId, "State")
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
    @Html.DropDownList("stateId", String.Empty)
    @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.stateId)
</div>

<div class="editor-label">
    @Html.LabelFor(model => model.cityId, "City")
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
    @*<select id="cityId"></select>*@
    @Html.DropDownList("cityId", String.Empty)
    @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.cityId)
</div>

The content in the drop downs are bound by the controller, and are automatically populated. Note: in my experience removing this binding and relying on java script to populate the drop downs make you lose validation. Besides, the way we are binding here plays nice with validation, so there is no reason to change it.

Now onto our jQuery plugin:

(function ($) {
$.fn.cascade = function (secondaryDropDown, actionUrl, stringValueToCompare) {
    primaryDropDown = this; //This doesn't necessarily need to be global
    globalOptions = new Array(); //This doesn't necessarily need to be global
    for (var i = 0; i < secondaryDropDown.options.length; i++) {
        globalOptions.push(secondaryDropDown.options[i]);
    }

    $(primaryDropDown).change(function () {
        if ($(primaryDropDown).val() != "") {
            $(secondaryDropDown).prop('disabled', false); //Enable the second dropdown if we have an acceptable value
            $.ajax({
                url: actionUrl,
                type: 'GET',
                cache: false,
                data: { id: $(primaryDropDown).val() },
                success: function (result) {
                    $(secondaryDropDown).empty() //Empty the dropdown so we can re-populate it
                    var dynamicData = new Array();
                    for (count = 0; count < result.length; count++) {
                        dynamicData.push(result[count][stringValueToCompare]);
                    }

                    //allow the empty option so the second dropdown will not look odd when empty
                    dynamicData.push(globalOptions[0].value);
                    for (var i = 0; i < dynamicData.length; i++) {
                        for (var j = 0; j < globalOptions.length; j++) {
                            if (dynamicData[i] == globalOptions[j].value) {
                                $(secondaryDropDown).append(globalOptions[j]);
                                break;
                            }
                        }

                    }
                },
                dataType: 'json',
                error: function () { console.log("Error retrieving cascading dropdown data from " + actionUrl); }
            });
        }
        else {
            $(secondaryDropDown).prop('disabled', true);
        }
        secondaryDropDown.selectedindex = 0; //this prevents a previous selection from sticking
    });
    $(primaryDropDown).change();
};
} (jQuery));

You can copy the above jQuery that i created, into <script>...</script> tags in your view, or in a separate script file if you wish (note I updated this to make it cross browser, however the scenario in which i was using is no longer required, it should work however).

In those same script tags, (not in a separate file) you can call the plugin by using the following javascript:

$(document).ready(function () {
    var primaryDropDown = document.getElementById('stateId');
    var secondaryDropdown = document.getElementById('cityId');
    var actionUrl = '@Url.Action("GetData")'
    $(primaryDropDown).cascade(secondaryDropdown, actionUrl);
});

Remember to add the $(document).ready part, the page must be fully loaded before you try to make the drop downs cascade.

Answer 4

Thanks Darin for your lead to the solution. It greatly helped me to arrive to the point. But as 'xxviktor' mentioned, I did got circular ref. error. To get rid of it, I've done this way.

    public string GetCounties(int countryID)
    {
        List<County> objCounties = new List<County>();
        var objResp = _mastRepo.GetCounties(countryID, ref objCounties);
        var objRetC = from c in objCounties
                      select new SelectListItem
                      {
                          Text = c.Name,
                          Value = c.ID.ToString()
                      };
        return new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(objRetC);
    }

And to achieve auto cascading, I've slightly extended jQuery extension this way.

        $('#ddlCountry').cascade({
            url: '@Url.Action("GetCounties")',
            paramName: 'countryID',
            childSelect: $('#ddlState'),
            childCascade: true
        });

And the actual JS is using this parameter as below (inside JSON request).

                // trigger child change
                if (opts.childCascade) {
                    opts.childSelect.change();
                }

Hope this helps someone with similar issue.

Answer 5

<script src="~/Scripts/jquery-1.10.2.min.js"></script>


<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
        //Dropdownlist Selectedchange event
        $("#country").change(function () {
            $("#State").empty();
            $.ajax({
                type: 'POST',
                url: '@Url.Action("State")', // we are calling json method

                dataType: 'json',

                data: { id: $("#country").val() },
                // here we are get value of selected country and passing same value
              

                success: function (states) {
                    // states contains the JSON formatted list
                    // of states passed from the controller

                    $.each(states, function (i, state) {
                        $("#State").append('<option value="' + state.Value + '">' +
                             state.Text + '</option>');
                        // here we are adding option for States

                    });
                },
            error: function (ex) {
                alert('Failed to retrieve states.' + ex);
            }
        });
        return false;
    })
    });
</script>

<div>
    @Html.DropDownList("country", ViewBag.country as List<SelectListItem>, "CountryName", new { style = "width: 200px;" })
</div>
<div>

</div>
<div>
    @Html.DropDownList("State", ViewBag.country as List<SelectListItem>)

</div>

From controller I am getting the values

 public async Task<ActionResult> Country()
    {

        Country co = new Country();
        List<SelectListItem> li = new List<SelectListItem>();
        li.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "Select", Value = "0" });
        li.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "India", Value = "1" });
        li.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "Nepal", Value = "2" });
        li.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "USA", Value = "3" });
        li.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "Kenya", Value = "4" }); ;
        ViewBag.country= li;
        return View();
    }
    public JsonResult  state(string id)
    {
        List<SelectListItem> states = new List<SelectListItem>();
        states.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "--Select State--", Value = "0" });
        switch (id)
        {
            case "1":


                states.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "MP", Value = "1" });
                states.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "UP", Value = "2" });
                break;
            case "3":

                states.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "USA1", Value = "3" });
                states.Add(new SelectListItem { Text = "USA2", Value = "4" });
                break;
        }

        return Json(new SelectList(states, "Value", "Text", JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet));
    }