@Html.DropDownListFor Options with value and text without using ViewModels

Question

Suppose I have a Simple table of group like in this picture,

I want to populate this as a dropdown having options value as GroupID and Name as text like shown here,

<select id="dropdown">
    <option value="1">superadmin</option>
    <option value="2">Support Desk</option>
    <option value="3" selected="selected">SSL I</option>
    <option value="4">SSL II Admin</option>
    <option value="5">SSL II</option>
    <option value="6">Client</option>
</select>

How Can I achieve this without using ViewModels and any complexity? Actually I want to do this only using ViewBag ? Is it possible ?

Note : This question is only for idea sharing purposes Please do not consider it as too broad.

Answer 1

Yes, I'm aware For sure it was possible,

Approach 1 :

In the view you can simply create a Dictionary<string, string> and those data in that Dictionary like here

    public ActionResult Index() {
            var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
            var allGroup = GetAllGroupNames(); //Query to get all data from table

            foreach(var ag in allGroup)
            {
                dictionary.Add(ag.GroupId.ToString(), ag.Name);

            }

            ViewBag.selectGroupList = dictionary; // Add dictionary to ViewBag

            return View();
      }

Then simply your DropDownListFor will looks like this,

 @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.GroupId, new SelectList((Dictionary<string,string>)ViewBag.selectGroupList, "Key", "Value",new { @id="dropdown"}))

---

Approach 2 :

 ViewBag.selectGroupList = new SelectList(GetAllGroupNames(), "GroupId", "Name");

and in view

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.GroupId, (SelectList)ViewBag.selectGroupList)

Result:

Any better approaches rather than this will be appreciated