Set selected value in SelectList after instantiation

Question

Am I right to think that there is no way to set the selected value in the C# class SelectList after it is created? Isn\'t that a bit silly?

Answer 1

I think you can do this in the controller. If you are going to render a drop down list with name/ID StateCode, then you can set the selected state using this code after the SelectList is created:

ViewData["StateCode"] = "VT";

It seems that the drop down list HTML helper looks for a ViewData item with the same name as the drop down list that's being created.

I don't think I like using this technique, but it does seem to work.

I do agree that the SelectList class is a little weak at the moment. I'd like to be able to create a SelectList and then select a value later by either value or text.