MVC3- Radion Button Grouping and Binding from database - asp.net-mvc-3

Question

How to get the radio button options from database using in MVC3 Razor. I have 4 options for each question, the options should be populated from the database and should be grouped.
#Html.RadioButtonFor(model => Model.AAAa, 'Y', new { title = "Please check this if AAA has been updated" })
Yes
This gives me hard coded value as Yes but text needs to be populated with DB Table.
How would I bind it back the selected value back to the database?. An Example would be more helpful.
Thank you

Answer 1

As always you start by defining a view model that will represent the information you will be dealing with in the view:
public class MyViewModel
{
public string SelectedValue { get; set; }
// In your question you seem to be dealing with a title attribute as well
// If this is the case you could define a custom view model ItemViewModel
// which will contain the Value, the Text and the Title properties for
// each radio button because the built-in SelectListItem class that I am using here
// has only Value and Text properties
public SelectListItem[] Items { get; set; }
}
then you write a controller:
public class HomeController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index()
{
var model = new MyViewModel
{
// Obviously those will come from your database or something
Items = new[]
{
new SelectListItem { Value = "Y", Text = "Yes" },
new SelectListItem { Value = "N", Text = "No" },
new SelectListItem { Value = "D", Text = "Dunno" }
}
};
return View(model);
}
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(MyViewModel model)
{
return View(model);
}
}
then a corresponding view:
#model MyViewModel
#using (Html.BeginForm())
{
for (int i = 0; i < Model.Items.Count; i++)
{
#Html.RadioButtonFor(x => x.SelectedValue, Model.Items[i].Value, new { id = "item_" + i })
#Html.Label("item_" + i, Model.Items[i].Text)
<br/>
}
<button type="submit">OK</button>
}
or to make the view less messy you could write a custom HTML helper that will render those radio buttons for you:
public static class HtmlExtensions
{
public static IHtmlString RadioButtonListFor<TModel, TProperty>(
this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper,
Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> expression,
IEnumerable<SelectListItem> items
)
{
var sb = new StringBuilder();
var i = 0;
foreach (var item in items)
{
var id = string.Format("item{0}", i++);
var radio = htmlHelper.RadioButtonFor(expression, item.Value, new { id = id });
var label = htmlHelper.Label(id, item.Text);
sb.AppendFormat("{0}{1}<br/>", radio, label);
}
return new HtmlString(sb.ToString());
}
}
and now your view will simply become:
#model MyViewModel
#using (Html.BeginForm())
{
#Html.RadioButtonListFor(x => x.SelectedValue, Model.Items)
<button type="submit">OK</button>
}
which obviously is nicer to look.