Formatting SelectList Items

Question

Hi all,

I was wondering if there was a way to format 2 strings in a selectlist and display them as following:

String begins with Item1 and spaces following it until 10 spaces are taken up followed by a Delimiter "|" and string 2

So all Selectlist items binded to a drop down list will be displayed as following

Item 1     |Name1
Item 2     |Name2
Item 55    |Name3
Item 500   |Name4
Item 100000|Name5

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use System.String.PadRight()

for(int i = 0; i <= 10; i+= 5)
{
  string ItemString = "Item" + i.ToString().PadRight(10, ' ') + "|" + "Name" + i.ToString();
   SelectList.Items.Add(ItemString);
}

would result in

Item0     |Name0
Item5     |Name5
Item10    |Name10

Of course, you'll want to ensure that you're using a fixed-width font in the drop-down list

Answer 2

You can use string format to build the text for the items:

string itemstring = string.Format("Item {0:0000000000}|Name {0}", itemNumber);

If you are using data binding to build the item, you can put the format expression in the DataTextFormatString to have ASP.NET format the items for you.

Answer 3

best way to format it is:

string itemstring = String.Format("{0,-10}|{1}", item, name);