Add a dummy entry to DropDownListFor

Question

I have the following razor syntax for creating a dropdown list from a list of objects.

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.data_connection, 
        new SelectList( Model.connections, 
          "ID", "Title", 
           Model.data_connection) , 
        new { style = "width: 420px;" })

This works, but I'd like to add a - select a connection - style dummy entry to the top of the list. I can do this by passing a SelectList instead of my collection of objects, but I'm wondering if there's a nice easy way to do this in the view?

Answer 1

Doh, found the answer here

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.data_connection, 
    new SelectList( Model.connections, 
      "ID", "Title", 
       Model.data_connection) , 
    " -- select a connection -- ",
    new { style = "width: 420px;" })