Hi Guys, I have a newbie question on HTML.select (UI helper). 

One of the tutorial I have come across shows the following: 

"string [] SelectList = new string[]{'Apple', 'Orange','Mango','Banana'};" 

"Html.Select('FruitList',SelectList)" 

it will give me:
value = "Apple"  "Apple " 

However, I would like to have the following instead: 
value = "1"  "Apple " 

What should I do on the VIEW in order to achieve this? 
thx, George

what you need to do is create a collection to use for your data source.  for example create this:
 
class DropDownData
{
int ID;
string Value;
}

List<DropDownData> datasource = new List<DropDownData>();


  Populate your list and in the html:
 
Html.Select("dropDown", datasource, "Value", "ID")
  
 
that'll give you the ID and Text that you are looking for. 
Remember if you have gotten your answer to mark your thread as answered.

Thx a lot.
But when I tried to do things like:
ViewData["DropDownDataList"] = datasource

I couldn't figure out how to get it back out from the ViewData to the HTML.Select though

thx

Hey thx a lot,
IT WORKS

But now I have a lot of server-side code on the view:

create a List<obj>
List<Controllers.CountryOfResidenceObj> CountryOfResidenceObjList = new List<Controllers.CountryOfResidenceObj>(); 
then, bind it from the ViewData
CountryOfResidenceObjList = ViewData["CountryOfResidenceObjList"] as List<Controllers.CountryOfResidenceObj>;

"<%=Html.Select("dropDown", CountryOfResidenceObjList, "_CountryString", "_CountryValue")%>"

Is there anyway I can make it simplier for the view?

What you can do and probably should do to make it more concise is this.  give your view a viewdata for example:
ViewPage<List<Controllers.CountryOfResidenceObj>>
Then your controller is what gets the list and when you render your view:
RenderView("view.aspx", CountryOfResidinceList);
 
Now you will have a strongly typed view data.  you then don't need to do any binding in the view codebehind.
Remember if you have gotten your answer to mark your thread as answered.