DropDownList Initial Value Duplicated - MVC 5 - drop-down-menu

Question

I have a #foreach in my View that makes a table. Each row has two items within it's td. When I click my Edit button, the visible item's in a row disappear (DislayFor's) and the hidden items in the row appear (DropDownList)
View Code
<td class="col-md-3">
<span class="item-display">
<span style="font-size: 17px">
#Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Movie.Name)
</span>
</span>
<span class="item-field">
#Html.DropDownList("movieID", item.Movie.Name)
</span>
</td>
By doing this I can select a new value in the DropDownList and then Save that change to my Database (then hiding the DropDownList and unhiding the DisplayFor.
Everything works fine, however I have an issue with the initally selected value, it appears twice with the initial value having an actual value of 0 (which relates to nothing in the DB).
Picture Example
QUESTION:
Right now my dropdown add's a value upon clicking Edit, the item initially selected has the correct name but it is given the index of 0 (which is invalid for my database).
I want to have the initially selected item to NOT be added, but rather to set the selector of the dropdown to the CORRECT INDEX of the appropriate item. I am not sure why it duplicates my selected item twice.
Controller Code
public ActionResult Index(string Filter, string searchString)
{
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString) || String.IsNullOrEmpty(Filter) || (Int32.Parse(Filter) == 0))
{
ViewBag.employeeID = new SelectList(db.Employees, "ID", "Name", );
ViewBag.movieID = new SelectList(db.Movies, "ID", "Name", initiallySelectedValue);
ViewBag.roleID = new SelectList(db.Roles, "ID", "RoleType");
var movieemployees = db.MovieEmployees.Include(m => m.Employee).Include(m => m.Movie).Include(m => m.Role);
return View(movieemployees.ToList().OrderBy(x => x.Employee.Name));
}
else
{
ViewBag.employeeID = new SelectList(db.Employees, "ID", "Name");
ViewBag.movieID = new SelectList(db.Movies, "ID", "Name");
ViewBag.roleID = new SelectList(db.Roles, "ID", "RoleType");
var parameter = Int32.Parse(Filter);
return View(db.MovieEmployees.Include(m => m.Employee).Include(m => m.Movie).Include(m => m.Role).Where(x => (parameter == 1 && x.Movie.Name.Contains(searchString)) || (parameter == 2 && x.Employee.Name.Contains(searchString)) || (parameter == 3 && x.Role.RoleType.Contains(searchString))).Distinct().ToList().OrderBy(x => x.Employee.Name));
}
}

Answer 1

Your understanding of the parameters for DropDownList isn't quite correct, but you're close! The second parameter for DropDownList (in your case item.Movie.Name) is adding an option label. If you replaced that with a hard-coded string that would serve as a good example of what it's doing (you would see that string as the first option of every select input).
It sounds to me like you want to delete that last parameter since it will only end up serving as a duplicate. Your code would simply look like this:
#Html.DropDownList("movieID")
The important part of your code is where you're building the object that you're storing in ViewData with the key movieID. You didn't post your controller code, but I imagine it looks something like:
var movies = movieRepository.GetAllMovies();
ViewData["movieID"] = new SelectList(movies, "Name", "Id", initiallySelectedValue);
Where Name and Id are the names of properties on the movie object and initiallySelectedValue is rather self explanatory.
Edit
Here is an example of how I would go about solving your problem:
Controller
public ActionResult Index() {
//Get all the possible movies that can be selected
var movies = movieRepository.GetAllMovies();
//Get a list of employees with their related favorite movie record
var employeesWithFavoriteMovie = movieRepository.GetEmployeesWithMovie();
var employeeModels = new List<EmployeeModel>();
//Iterate through the list of employees and their favorite movie, and build the model
foreach (var employeeWithFavoriteMovie in employeesWithFavoriteMovie) {
employeeModels.Add(new EmployeeModel() {
FirstName = employeeWithFavoriteMovie.FirstName,
FavoriteMovieId = employeeWithFavoriteMovie.Movie.Id,
MovieSelectList = new SelectList(movies, "Name", "Id", employeeWithFavoriteMovie.Movie.Id)
});
}
return View(employeeModels);
}
View
#model IEnumerable<WebApplication1.Controllers.EmployeeModel>
#foreach (var employeeModel in Model) {
#Html.DropDownList("Test", employeeModel.MovieSelectList)
}
Notice how a SelectList was built for each employee and that each list is then populated with that employees current favorite movie id. This will now put you in a position to have a properly built SelectList for each employee.

Answer 2

#Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.classmasterd_HCF[i].TD_TEACHER, new SelectList(Model.Teacher, "ParamKey", "ParamValue", Model.classmasterd_HCF[i].TD_TEACHER) as SelectList, new { #class = "form-control input-sm DtlField EditableCtrl", #style = "min-width:100%;", #disabled = "disabled" })
where Teacher in Model.Teacher is a model with code in paramKey and description in paramvalue. Selected value saved in TD_TEACHER field