ASP.NET MVC 2 – Html.DropDownListFor confusion with ViewModel

I was also experiencing the same issue.

When I debug the Action and look at the ModelState.Values[1].Errors[0].Exception for example, I see the following:

{“The parameter conversion from type ‘System.String’ to type ‘System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair`2[[System.String, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Int64, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]]’ failed because no type converter can convert between these types.”} System.Exception {System.InvalidOperationException}

In my scenario, my SelectList is created from a Dictionary and i use this in my view:

<%=Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.MyDictionary, 
                             new SelectList(
                                 Model.MyDictionary, 
                                 "Value", 
                                 "Key")) %>

When I changed it to:

<%=Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.MyDictionary.Keys, // <-- changed to .Keys
                             new SelectList(
                                 Model.MyDictionary, 
                                 "Value", 
                                 "Key")) %>

It worked without issues.

Thank you.