asp.net mvc - Adding a css class to select using @Html.DropDownList()

Question

I'm building my first MVC application after years of doing webforms, and for some reason I am not able to make this work:

@Html.DropDownList("PriorityID", String.Empty, new {@class="textbox"} )

Error message:

System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper<SPDR.Models.Bug>' does not contain a definition for DropDownList and the best extension method overload System.Web.Mvc.Html.SelectExtensions.DropDownList(System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper, string, System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<System.Web.Mvc.SelectListItem>, object) has some invalid arguments

Any help greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Looking at the controller, and learing a bit more about how MVC actually works, I was able to make sense of this.

My view was one of the auto-generated ones, and contained this line of code:

@Html.DropDownList("PriorityID", string.Empty)

To add html attributes, I needed to do something like this:

@Html.DropDownList("PriorityID", (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewBag.PriorityID, new { @class="dropdown" })

Thanks again to @Laurent for your help, I realise the question wasn't as clear as it could have been...

UPDATE:

A better way of doing this would be to use DropDownListFor where possible, that way you don't rely on a magic string for the name attribute

@Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.PriorityID, (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewBag.PriorityID, new { @class = "dropdown" })