Telerik MVC Grid: How to use DropDownList in a column?

Question

I have a Telerik MVC grid, in an MVC 3 application with Razor, which is being Ajax-bound. I am now trying to add a drop list column to it, so that users can use it in edit m

Answer 1

I managed to work this out, somewhat, but I still have a question. here's what I changed to get it working:

Created a ViewData object in the controller, like this ...

public ActionResult Index()
{
    // ViewData object here ...
    ViewData["ProductCategories"] = new SelectList(_productCategoryService.GetActiveProductCategories(), "ProductCategoryID", "ProductCategoryName");
    var products = _productService.GetProducts().ToList();
    var presentationModel = _mapper.MapAsList(products);
    return View(presentationModel);
}

//
// GET: /Product/
[GridAction]
public ViewResult _Index()
{
    // ViewData object here ...
    ViewData["ProductCategories"] = new SelectList(_productCategoryService.GetActiveProductCategories(), "ProductCategoryID", "ProductCategoryName");
    return View(new GridModel
                    {
                        Data = _mapper.MapAsList(_productService.GetProducts().ToList())
                    });
}

Then, I used the ViewData object in the DropDownListHelper, like this ...

@using System.Collections
@model Models.PresentationModels.ProductPresentationModel

@(Html.Telerik().DropDownList()
        .Name("ProductCategoryName")
        .BindTo(new SelectList((IEnumerable)ViewData["ProductCategories"], "Value", "Text"))
);

My question now is ... do I have to use the ViewData object? I'd love to be able to use a property off of my model. But, for some reason my Model is always NULL inside the Helper file. And, if I try to place the DropDownList code inside the Grid creation code, the DropDownList doesn't work at all.

So, do I have any other options?