title: MVC Razor - use @Html.DropDownListFor() for the 12 months of the year
body: <p>I am quite new to the HTML helper extensions in MVC, let alone in Razor, and I'm looking for a simple, neat way to display a dropdown list for the 12 months of the year, with the value as the number and the text the "MMM" representation of the date.</p>
  
  <p>So the HTML at the end should be like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;select&gt;
    &lt;option value="1"&gt;Jan&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value="2"&gt;Feb&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value="3"&gt;Mar&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;!-- etc --&gt;
  &lt;/select&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is it possible to do this entirely in the view? I need an answer that users the <code>@Html.DropDownListFor()</code> so I can take advantage of automatic model binding. I get close with the line of code below, but it doesn't have the distinct values.</p>
  
  <pre><code>@Html.DropDownListFor(model =&gt; Model.DobMonth, new SelectList(Enumerable.Range(1,12).Select(r =&gt; new DateTime(2000, r, 1).ToString("MMM"))), "- -")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>For non-technical reasons, I can't use a jQuery datepicker.</p>