A dropdownlist in MVC is a collection of SelectListItem objects. Depending on your project requirement you may either hard code the values in code or retrieve them from a database table. In this tutorial, I will show you how to generate a dropdownlist using DropDownList html helper based on both approaches.

Generating a DropDownList using Hard Coded Values

You will use the following overloaded version of "DropDownList" HTML helper.
DropDownList(string name, IEnumerable<SelectListItem> selectList, string optionLabel)

The following code will generate a departments dropdown list. The first item in the list will be "Select Department".
@Html.DropDownList("Departments", new List<SelectListItem>
{
    new SelectListItem { Text = "IT", Value = "1", Selected=true},
    new SelectListItem { Text = "HR", Value = "2"},
    new SelectListItem { Text = "Payroll", Value = "3"}
}, "Select Department")

The downside of hard coding dropdownlist values with-in code is that, if we have to add or remove departments from the dropdownlist, the code needs to be modified.

Retrieve DropDownList from A Database Table

Pass list of Departments from the controller, then store them in "ViewBag"

public ActionResult Index()
{
    // Connect to the database
    SampleDBContext db = new SampleDBContext();
    // Retrieve departments, and build SelectList
    ViewBag.Departments = new SelectList(db.Departments, "Id", "Name");
           
    return View();
}

Now in the "Index" view, you can access Departments list from "ViewBag"
@Html.DropDownList("Departments", "Select Department")

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