C# How do I run some code for the selected item in a listbox?

Question

I have a listbox of names, I want to click one of the names so that it is highlighted and then click a button that runs some code for the selected item. How do I call this selected item?

    private void btnEcho_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
         listbox1.SelectedItem......
    }

Many thanks

Answer 1

String s = listbox1.SelectedItem.Value.ToString();

Don't forget to do a null check, because this will throw an error if your list is empty or if no value is selected.

Answer 2

You're question is not clearly to me.

Example, you have a listbox of three items: A, B and C. You have, as you do with your example, a click-event. In that click-event you can use the switch-statement to handle some code for each item:

switch (listbox1.SelectedItem)
{
  case "A":
       // Code when select A
       break;
  case "B":
       // Code when select B
       break;
  ... (and so on).
}

Code is an example and not tested. See switch for more information.

Answer 3

The listbox isn't very intuitive because it contains objects instead of something like ListItem, but if you just want the text you can do this:

string selectedText = listbox1.SelectedItem.ToString();

Answer 4

Listbox1.SelectedItem gets the actual selected item. You can then further call from SelectedItem to get other properties/methods such as SelectedItem.Text or SelectedItem.Value

If you wanted to make it all happen upon selection from the listbox (instead of pressing a button), you could just add a SelectedIndexChanged event for Listbox1 (and in ASP.NET make sure that AutoPostBack is set to TRUE)