Building MVC Select Lists The Easy Way

It is common to have a view model that contains a list of select list items ( IEnumerable ). However, I get a little annoyed when I see a select list item getting initialized like this:

Widgets = db.Widgets.FindAll().Select(x => new SelectListItem() { Text = x.Name, Value = x.Value });

Although this is legal syntax its just a little bit too ugly for my liking. In an effort to make life simpler I came up with the following helper class:

public static class SelectListFactory
{
    public static IEnumerable<SelectListItem> BuildList<T>(IEnumerable<T> items, Func<T, SelectListItem> func)
    {
        return items.Select(func);
    }        

    public static IEnumerable<SelectListItem> BuildList<T>(
        IEnumerable<T> items,
        Func<T, string> text,
        Func<T, string> value = null,
        Func<T, Boolean> selected = null)
    {
        return items.Select(x => new SelectListItem{
            Text = text.Invoke(x),
            Value = value == null ? text.Invoke(x) : value.Invoke(x),
            Selected = selected == null ? false : selected.Invoke(x)
        });            
    }        
}    

With the help of our new SelectListFactory we can now re-write that first block of code as:

Widgets = SelectListFactory.BuildList( db.Widgets.FindAll(), x => x.Name, x => x.Value );

Hmm, not to shabby. However, I think an extension method could make it even cleaner...

public static class SelectListExtensions
{
    public static IEnumerable<SelectListItem> BuildList<T>(
            this IEnumerable<T> items,
            Func<T, string> text,
            Func<T, string> value = null,
            Func<T, Boolean> selected = null
        )
    {
        return SelectListFactory.BuildList(items, text, value, selected);
    }
}

So now lets rewrite the method using our new extension method...

Widgets =  db.Widgets.BuildList( x => x.Name, x => x.Value );

Now that is considerably better than what we started with! Happy Coding!