SelectedIndex = -1 with data bound Combo

Question

Is there any equivalent to this when a combo is data bound? I've been through this hundreds of times before, but I'm having a brain freeze moment.

Answer 1

In asp.net the closest you could get is to add in a false item such as "---Select Something---" and have it as index 0, then you would set and perform checks on index 0 instead of -1.

Example:

dropdownlist1.datasource = DT
dropdownlist1.datatextfield = "EmployeeName"
dropdownlist1.datavaluefield = "EmployeeID"
dropdownlist1.databind

dropdownlist1.items.insert(0, "---"Select An Employee---")

dropdownlist1.selectedindex = 0

Then during your validation you could make sure to check to make sure selectedindex <> 0

Answer 2

A trick I've done in the past, is that if your DataValue field is going to be a numeric field (such as an Id), you can assign a range validator object to it and check that the value itself is greater than 0. I then create my "select" item to have a value of -99 and I can then perform validation on the client side.