ASP.NET MVC 4: create dropdownlist from an enum (Enumeration helper)

Thursday

Populate dropdownlist with enum in asp.net mvc 4:

                                                      In one of my previous article I'm explained how to create  a dropdownlist from a controller class. And in this post I'm going to explaine how to create a dropdownlist from an enum.

First create  a helper ennum class with your dropdown items. Here I'm using three options "Daily","Quickly","Weekly".

using System.Reflection;
using System.ComponentModel;
namespace EnumHtmlHelper.Helper
{
    public static class EnumDropDown
    {
        public static string GetEnumDescription<TEnum>(TEnum value)
        {
            FieldInfo fi = value.GetType().GetField(value.ToString());
            DescriptionAttribute[] attributes = (DescriptionAttribute[])fi.
                   GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);
            if ((attributes != null) && (attributes.Length > 0))
                return attributes[0].Description;
            else
                return value.ToString();
        }
        public enum Interval
        {
            [Description("Daily")]
            D = 1,
            [Description("Quick")]
            Q = 2,
            [Description("Weekly")]
            W = 3
        } 
    }    
}

Then add the following code into your (Razor) view to get the dropdown list.

<div class="ddlSmall">

 @{
     var EnumInterval = from Helper.EnumDropDown.Interval n in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Helper.EnumDropDown.Interval))
     elect new SelectListItem
     {
          Value = n.ToString(),
          Text = EnumDropDown.GetEnumDescription(n),
     };
    }
</div>

The output of the above code look like this in page source

<select id="Interval" name="Interval">
         <option value="D">Daily</option>
         <option value="Q">Quick</option>
         <option value="W">Weekly</option>
</select>

The output of the above code look like this in web page

Please share this post with your friends. If it's useful to you. Thanks!.