Dropdownlist from an Enum in ASP.NET MVC Application

I am trying to use the Html.DropDownList extension method but can't figure out how to use it with an enumeration.

Let's say I have an enumeration like this:

public enum ItemTypes
{
    Movie = 1,
    Game = 2,
    Book = 3
}

How do I go about creating a dropdown with these values using the Html.DropDownList extension method?

Or is my best bet to simply create a for loop and create the Html elements manually?

Ans:

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type",
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType",
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) ,
   "Select My Type",
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

Or

This one also allows you to use descriptive strings rather than enumeration constants in the drop down. To do this, decorate each enumeration entry with a [System.ComponentModel.Description] attribute.

For example:

public enum TestEnum
{
  [Description("Full test")]
  FullTest,

  [Description("Incomplete or partial test")]
  PartialTest,

  [Description("No test performed")]
  None
}

Here is code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Mvc.Html;
using System.Reflection;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq.Expressions;

 ...

 private static Type GetNonNullableModelType(ModelMetadata modelMetadata)
    {
        Type realModelType = modelMetadata.ModelType;

        Type underlyingType = Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(realModelType);
        if (underlyingType != null)
        {
            realModelType = underlyingType;
        }
        return realModelType;
    }

    private static readonly SelectListItem[] SingleEmptyItem = new[] { new SelectListItem { Text = "", Value = "" } };

    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 static MvcHtmlString EnumDropDownListFor<TModel, TEnum>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, Expression<Func<TModel, TEnum>> expression)
    {
        return EnumDropDownListFor(htmlHelper, expression, null);
    }

    public static MvcHtmlString EnumDropDownListFor<TModel, TEnum>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, Expression<Func<TModel, TEnum>> expression, object htmlAttributes)
    {
        ModelMetadata metadata = ModelMetadata.FromLambdaExpression(expression, htmlHelper.ViewData);
        Type enumType = GetNonNullableModelType(metadata);
        IEnumerable<TEnum> values = Enum.GetValues(enumType).Cast<TEnum>();

        IEnumerable<SelectListItem> items = from value in values
            select new SelectListItem
            {
                Text = GetEnumDescription(value),
                Value = value.ToString(),
                Selected = value.Equals(metadata.Model)
            };

        // If the enum is nullable, add an 'empty' item to the collection
        if (metadata.IsNullableValueType)
            items = SingleEmptyItem.Concat(items);

        return htmlHelper.DropDownListFor(expression, items, htmlAttributes);
    }

You can then do this in your view:

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(model => model.MyEnumProperty)

Hope this helps you!