Populating a ComboBox using C#

Question

Hi,

I would like to populate a combobox with the following:

Visible item / Item Value

English / En

Italian / It

Spainish / Sp

etc....

Any help please?

Also it is possible that after populating the Combobox, to make it read only?

Answer 1

Set the ValueMember/DisplayMember properties to the name of the properties of your Language objects.

class Language
{
    string text;
    string value;

    public string Text
    {
        get 
        {
            return text;
        }
    }

    public string Value
    {
        get
        {
            return value;
        }
    }

    public Language(string text, string value)
    {
        this.text = text;
        this.value = value;
    }
}

...

combo.DisplayMember= "Text";
combo.ValueMember = "Value";
combo.Items.Add(new Language("English", "en"));

Answer 2

Create a class Language

public class Language
{
     public string Name{get;set;}
     public string Value{get;set;}
     public override string ToString() { return this.Name;}
}

Then, add as many language to the combobox that you want:

yourCombobox.Items.Add(new Language{Name="English",Value="En"});

Answer 3

  Language[] items = new Language[]{new Language("English", "En"),
                new Language("Italian", "It")};

            languagesCombo.ValueMember = "Alias";
            languagesCombo.DisplayMember = "FullName";
            languagesCombo.DataSource = items.ToList();

            languagesCombo.DropDownStyle = ComboBoxStyle.DropDownList;

 class Language
    {
        public string FullName { get; set; }
        public string Alias { get; set; }

        public Language(string fullName, string alias)
        {
            this.FullName = fullName;
            this.Alias = alias;
        }
    }

By making your drop down box "read-only" I am assuming you want to prevent user's typing in other options as opposed to being fully read-only where users cannot select a value??

If you wanted it to be fully read-only you could set the enabled property to be false.

Answer 4

To make it read-only, the DropDownStyle property to DropDownStyle.DropDownList.

To populate the ComboBox, you will need to have a object like Language or so containing both for instance:

public class Language {
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Code { get; set; }
}

Then, you may bind a IList to your ComboBox.DataSource property like so:

IList<Language> languages = new List<Language>();
languages.Add(new Language("English", "en"));
languages.Add(new Language("French", "fr"));

ComboxBox.DataSource = languages;
ComboBox.DisplayMember = "Name";
ComboBox.ValueMember = "Code";

This will do exactly what you expect.

Answer 5

Define a class

public class Language
{
     public string Name { get; set; }
     public string Value { get; set; }
}

then...

//Build a list
var dataSource = new List<Language>();
dataSource.Add(new Language() { Name = "blah", Value = "blah" });
dataSource.Add(new Language() { Name = "blah", Value = "blah" });
dataSource.Add(new Language() { Name = "blah", Value = "blah" });

//Setup data binding
this.comboBox1.DataSource = dataSource;
this.comboBox1.DisplayMember = "Name";
this.comboBox1.ValueMember = "Value";

// make it readonly
this.comboBox1.DropDownStyle = ComboBoxStyle.DropDownList;

Answer 6

What you could do is create a new class, similar to @Gregoire's example, however, you would want to override the ToString() method so it appears correctly in the combo box e.g.

public class Language
{
    private string _name;
    private string _code;

    public Language(string name, string code)
    {
        _name = name;
        _code = code;
    }

    public string Name { get { return _name; }  }
    public string Code { get { return _code; } }
    public override void ToString()
    {
        return _name;
    }
}