asp.net mvc populate dropdown from web.config value

grahamor · 27-03-2012 11:04AM #1

Hi, I have a string of types in the web.config like so :

<add key="types" value="one|two|three|four|five|six"/>

I would like to populate a dropdown with these values and then use an integer for the value. I am confused how i can autoset an integer for each entry .

Desired output

<select id="types">
	<option selected="selected" value="0">one</option>
	<option value="1">two</option>
	<option value="2">three</option>
	<option value="3">four</option>
	<option value="4">five</option>
	<option value="5">six</option>
</select>

I was thinking of using a dictionary but am unsure how to set the value field (the ??? below). Could i use some sort of enumeration for this ?

public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> ReportTypes
        {
            get { return new SelectList(getReportList());}
        }

        public Dictionary<int,String> getReportList()
        {
            String reportTypes = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["types"].ToString();

            Dictionary<int, String> types = new Dictionary<int, string>([B]???[/B],reportTypes.Split('|'));

            return types;
        }

Thanks for any tips

Giblet · 27-03-2012 12:34PM

You could do something like this

<add key="types" value="1,one|2,two|3,three|4,four|5,five|6,six"/>

And split on "|" then split on ","

You can also use a loop for add each key to the dictionary using an incrementing index.

You could also hook up a configuration section and have a class which holds the structure which can be de-serialised from the web.config.

Procasinator · 27-03-2012 02:12PM

Sounds like the job of a for loop to me. Or if you like LINQ:

public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> GetReportList()
{
	string reportTypes = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["types"].ToString();
	return reportTypes.Split('|')
		.Select((text, value) => new SelectListItem { Text = text, Value = value.ToString() });
}

The only thing I would say, why do you need a numeric value? Could you not use the text as the the value, too.

You could run into a problems if you were storing the chosen values somewhere and wanted to add an item somewhere in between values. Your generated indexes would then no longer match up.

asp.net mvc populate dropdown from web.config value

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