Drop Down List MVC4

Question

I am building a partial view which shows a list of accounts that a user can select. It's displayed on a Layout page, as they can switch between accounts at any time in their session.

In my controller, I have returned a list of accounts, and built a model for the partial view:

public ActionResult AccountPortfolios()
        {
            var personId = int.Parse(User.Identity.Name);
            var ports = new AccountService().GetPortfoliosByPersonId(personId);

            var result = new List<AccountPortfolioListModel>();

            foreach (var port in ports)
            {
                result.Add(new AccountPortfolioListModel
                    {
                        Description = port.Description,
                        Id = port.Id
                    });
            }

            return View(result);

        }

I am then passing the model (which is List<AccountPortfolioListModel>() to my View.

In my view, I have the model declared as:

@model List<BasicFinanceUI.Models.AccountPortfolioListModel>

But then I am stuck. I want to display the list in a Drop Down, with a button to select the selected one, and call a Post method.

Additionally, am I using the right thing? A partial view to show a drop down list of something that is visible on my Layout page?

Answer 1

we like to use a static call for populating drop downs

@Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.Account, PathToController.AccountList())

then on your controller

public static List<SelectListItem> AccountList(){
    List<SelectListItem> ls = new List<SelectListItem>();
    //populate your list
    return ls;
}

I don't know that you need a partial view for just a drop down. How I would do this is to put an input variable on the index action of the account

public ActionResult Index(string account)

then on your buttons click event

window.location = '@Url.Action("Index", "Controller", new { account = "----" })'.replace("----", $('#Account').val());