Html.DropDownList razor - asp.net

Question

I'm new to MVC and C# and having hard time with a dropdown list.
What I'm trying to accomplish is to initialize my page with an object that keeps the settings.
(I read settings from XML file).
Here's what I have
public class StoreSettings
{
public String BackSrs2Path { get; set; }
public int NoLines { get; set; }
public String Requesturl { get; set; }
}
public class Store
{
public String StoreId { get; set; }
public String Address { get; set; }
public StoreSettings StoreSettings { get; set; }
}
and the Model for my view page is a list of Store
#model System.Collections.Generic.List<Control2.Models.Store>
#{
List<SelectListItem> selectList = new List<SelectListItem>();
foreach (var Store in Model)
{
SelectListItem i = new SelectListItem();
i.Text = Store.StoreId;
i.Value = Store.StoreId;
selectList.Add(i);
}
}
#using (Html.BeginForm())
{
SelectList list = new SelectList(selectList, "Value", "Text");
#Html.DropDownList("ddl", list, "select store", new { onchange = "this.form.submit();" });
}
}
By reading examples here managed to populate the dropdownlist from my model and postsback
but now i need to get only the selected object from the list and apply his seetings to the page to display it etc a message "you ve selected Store"+Storeid(the slected from dropdown)
Also this code is written in my cshtml page which isn't the best but couldn't figure how should I do it with ViewModel and dropdown list

Answer 1

Yes when I first started looking at the DropDownList Binding mechanisms of MVC I too had problems. What I'd like to do is suggest to you the following:
Create a Viewmodel and bind the entire view to the viewmodel... as follows:
public class VMStore
{
public VMStore()
{
ItemsInDropDown = new List<SelectListItem>(){
new SelectListItem{ Text="SomeValue", Selected=false, Value="SomeUniqueId"}
};
}
public String StoreId { get; set; }
public String Address { get; set; }
public StoreSettings StoreSettings { get; set; }
public string SelectedValue { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> ItemsInDropDown { get; set; }
public void Post()
{
//This method will have the user selected value...
}
}
The view will bind fields like this:
#model WebApplication1.ViewModels.VMStore
#{
ViewBag.Title = "GetStore";
Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
}
<h2>GetStore</h2>
<div>
<h4>VMStore</h4>
<hr />
<dl class="dl-horizontal">
#Html.BeginForm(){
<dt>Select Store</dt>
<dd>#Html.DropDownListFor(p=>Model.SelectedValue, Model.ItemsInDropDown) </dd>
<dd><button type="submit">Submit</button></dd>
}
</dl>
</div>
The action methods will look like this:
public ActionResult GetStore()
{
return View();
}
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult GetStore(ViewModels.VMStore userdata) {
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
userdata.Post();
}
return View(userdata);
}