Scaffolding MVC Controller - how to indicate dataValueField and dataTextField? - entity-framework

Question

One of the overload methods of SelectList (from the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Rendering namespace) is defined as:
public SelectList(IEnumerable items, string dataValueField, string dataTextField);
When I scaffold an "MVC Controller with view, using Entity Framework" and I create my CRUD pages, I may see the following method inside of my Controller:
public IActionResult Create()
{
ViewData["Continent"] = new SelectList(_context.Continent, **"ContinentID", "ContinentID"**);
ViewData["Country"] = new SelectList(_context.Country, **"CountryID", "CountryName"**);
return View();
}
The field supplied to the dataTextField parameter is different between Continent/Country. How does MVC/EntityFramework decide which field to supply to dataTextField when scaffolding a Controller? Is there something in the individual models or in the DbContext that I am overlooking? I'd like for the dataTextField of Continent to be "ContinentName" so that I don't have to change it manually in the future when I need to delete and then re-scaffold the Controller.
Edit:
Here are the model definitions:
The Model of the Controller that I posted above:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace Project.Models
{
public partial class ProjectForm
{
public int ProjectFormID { get; set; }
public int ContinentID { get; set; }
public int CountryID { get; set; }
public virtual Continent ContinentNavigation { get; set; }
public virtual Country CountryNavigation { get; set; }
}
}
The one that displays the "CountryName" in the dataTextField the way that I want to see it:
namespace Project.Models
{
public partial class Country
{
public int CountryID { get; set; }
public string CountryName { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<ProjectForm> ProjectForm { get; set; }
}
}
The one that displays the "ContinentID" in the dataTextField the way that I do NOT want to see it:
namespace Project.Models
{
public partial class Continent
{
public int ContinentID { get; set; }
public string ContinentName { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<ProjectForm> ProjectForm { get; set; }
}
}
There is nothing obviously different to me in the model definitions unfortunately.

Answer 1

I stumbled across this post today (a bit late), but see it still hasn't been answered.
While I can't say why the scaffolding chose to use one field over another in your scenarios (unless you initially had your class/model written differently the last time you cleaned/built your project), I can say how to force it to use a specific column.
Add the DisplayColumn attribute to your class. You will need to rebuild before scaffolding again for the change to take.
namespace Project.Models
{
[DisplayColumn("ContinentName")]
public partial class Continent
{
public int ContinentID { get; set; }
public string ContinentName { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<ProjectForm> ProjectForm { get; set; }
}
}