Populating a razor dropdownlist from a List in MVC

You can separate out your business logic into a viewmodel, so your view has cleaner separation.

First create a viewmodel to store the Id the user will select along with a list of items that will appear in the DropDown.

ViewModel:

public class UserRoleViewModel
{
    // Display Attribute will appear in the Html.LabelFor
    [Display(Name = "User Role")]
    public int SelectedUserRoleId { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> UserRoles { get; set; }
}

References:

• DisplayAttribute

Inside the controller create a method to get your UserRole list and transform it into the form that will be presented in the view.

Controller:

private IEnumerable<SelectListItem> GetRoles()
{
    var dbUserRoles = new DbUserRoles();
    var roles = dbUserRoles
                .GetRoles()
                .Select(x =>
                        new SelectListItem
                            {
                                Value = x.UserRoleId.ToString(),
                                Text = x.UserRole
                            });

    return new SelectList(roles, "Value", "Text");
}

public ActionResult AddNewUser()
{
    var model = new UserRoleViewModel
                    {
                        UserRoles = GetRoles()
                    };
    return View(model);
}

References:

• SelectListItem
• SelectList Constructor (IEnumerable, String, String)

Now that the viewmodel is created the presentation logic is simplified

View:

@model UserRoleViewModel

@Html.LabelFor(m => m.SelectedUserRoleId)
@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedUserRoleId, Model.UserRoles)

References:

• LabelExtensions.LabelFor
• SelectExtensions.DropDownListFor

This will produce:

<label for="SelectedUserRoleId">User Role</label>
<select id="SelectedUserRoleId" name="SelectedUserRoleId">
    <option value="1">First Role</option>
    <option value="2">Second Role</option>
    <option value="3">Etc...</option>
</select>