C# – How to retain spaces in DropDownList – ASP.net MVC Razor views

asp.net-mvcasp.net-mvc-3cdrop-down-menurazor

I'm binding my model in the following way in the view:

<%=Html.DropDownList("SelectedItem",new SelectList(Model.MyItems,"ItemId","ItemName")) %>

Issue is my item text is a formatted text with spaces in between words, as below.

#123  First          $234.00
#123  AnotherItem    $234.00
#123  Second         $234.00

I want to retain the spaces in this item text even after they are added to DropDownList. But unfortunately my DropDownList shows them without spaces as below:

#123 First $234.00
#123 AnotherItem $234.00
#123 Second $234.00

When I view the source of the page those spaces are intact but in display it is not. I've tried to add ' ' instead of spaces but SelectList (MVC framework class) internal method is using HtmlEncode before adding them as items in the dropdownlist.

Is there any way I can achieve this?

Best Answer

nbsp in html corresponds to "\xA0" as a C# string, so use this instead of spaces, when HTML encoded it will produce nbsp

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

C# – How to create a dropdownlist from an enum in ASP.NET MVC

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common