How do I display `int` items in a Razor view - asp.net-mvc-3

Question

I have this bit of code in my model:
public class ContactDaySelectorAttribute : SelectorAttribute
{
public override IEnumerable<SelectListItem> GetItems()
{
var contactDay = new List<ContactDay>
{
new ContactDay {Id = 1, Name = "Monday"},
new ContactDay {Id = 2, Name = "Tuesday"},
new ContactDay {Id = 3, Name = "Wednesday"},
new ContactDay {Id = 4, Name = "Thursday"},
new ContactDay {Id = 5, Name = "Friday"},
new ContactDay {Id = 6, Name = "Saturday"},
};
return contactDay.ToSelectList(m => m.Id, m => m.Name);
}
}
//
public class ContactDay
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
//
[ContactDaySelector]
public virtual int? ContactDayCheckBox { get; set; }
//
[ContactDaySelector]
[ReadOnly(true)]
public string ContactDayCheckBoxPost
{
get { return ContactDayCheckBox.ToString(); }
}
I use ContactDayCheckBox to store the int? value in the database. I use ContactDayCheckBoxPost to display the selected items (checkbox) in a confirmation view.
If I do #Html.EditorFor(m => m.ContactDayCheckBoxPost) in my view, and the user previously selected MORE than one day (for example), it only displays the "Name" for one day (i.e., if Monday, Tuesday previously selected, it only displays "Monday" in the view).
How can I go about getting the view to display all of the choices previously selected? I tried #foreach but it won't work with int, and I tried variations of looping that involved .Split(',') to insert a comma between the choices, but all I get is the actual "Id" value (e.g., "1" for "Monday", instead of "Monday").
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

ContactDayCheckBoxPost is defined as a string. What are you putting in this string before passing it to the view ?
If in case say you are passing a value as
ContactDayCheckBoxPost = "1, 2, 3, 4";
then in such case you can apply the Split(',') function and getting a list of these ids as string, which then you can use foreach to get the ids.
Also show us what you are using in your view, I found it a little difficult to understand what you are asking here.

Answer 2

THE PROBLEM (as I see it):
I think the problem you're having is that SelectList is a 'key/value' pair, but you're tying to use the 'key' as the 'value'. So for a key 'Monday' with a value '1', 1 would be the value I would expect. See http://codeclimber.net.nz/archive/2009/08/10/how-to-create-a-dropdownlist-with-asp.net-mvc.aspx for an examples and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.mvc.selectlistitem(v=vs.108).aspx for the definitions of the SelectListItem.
If you wanted an easy way to do this, you could probably just use:
return contactDay.ToSelectList(m => m.Name, m => m.Name); //Both the key and the value are Name
This will fail though, since your ContactDaySelector expects a nullable int:
[ContactDaySelector]
public virtual int? ContactDayCheckBox { get; set; }
Does that make sense?
If you want to use this approach, use your class and perform a lookup for the value "1" in your [HttpPost] action to find "Monday". On this note, why do you need to get this as a string (I'll extrapolate on this below)?
THE SOLUTION (as I see it):
A better solution might be to make a enum for your days of the week (actually, days of the week is given example on the enum help page - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sbbt4032(v=vs.80).aspx and it is even a built in enumeration http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.dayofweek.aspx). Then use this throughout your application (e.g. on the [HttpPost] action for your controller) to set this as a numeric value (e.g. (int)Days.Sun), but be able to retrieve its keyword value (e.g. Days.Sun.ToString();). See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stuartleeks/archive/2010/05/21/asp-net-mvc-creating-a-dropdownlist-helper-for-enums.aspx for an example of using an enum for a DropDownList.
If you have a need to work with the days of the week as a string, I don't really see a need to have a class for the days of the week. Since you're trying to select the same key and value as a string, why not add a list of strings to your ViewBag/ViewModel, e.g.
List<String> daysOfTheWeek = new List<String>() { "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thur", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun" };
ViewBag.DaysOfTheWeek = daysOfTheWeek;
Have a property called "WeekDay" in your Model or ViewModel:
public string WeekDay { get; set; }
Then you could use it to set a string property like so:
#Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.WeekDay, new SelectList(ViewBag.DaysOfTheWeek))
Note: you should really define an edit ViewModel for this approach, but ViewBag will be fine for debugging purposes.