Question

Can anybody help me with the issue I’m seeing? For some reason when I run my page, I get my drop down lists to populate the data, however the first item in my database, per each SQL query, doesn’t get populated.

For example, my database table is:

Category

1  Books
2  Clothing
3  Toys
4  Household Items

my first query –

SELECT Category FROM ProductCategories

my drop down list gets populated with

Clothing
Toys
Household Items

I have 2 other drop down lists I’m populating and those are doing the same thing. Once I get this figured out, I’ll try to figure out the other problem I’m having with inserting the data in the database.

Thank you!

public partial class InsertItems : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        SqlConnection connection;
        SqlCommand populateList;
        SqlDataReader reader;

        string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["LakerBids"].ConnectionString;
        connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString);

        populateList = new SqlCommand("USE LakerBids SELECT Category FROM ProductCategories;" +
                                "USE LakerBids SELECT SubCategory FROM ProductSubCategories;" +
                              "USE LakerBids SELECT LName FROM Users", connection);
        if (!IsPostBack)
        {
            try
            {
                connection.Open();
                reader = populateList.ExecuteReader();

                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    pcategory.DataSource = reader;
                    pcategory.DataValueField = "Category";
                    pcategory.DataBind();
                }

                reader.NextResult();

                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    psubcategory.DataSource = reader;
                    psubcategory.DataValueField = "SubCategory";
                    psubcategory.DataBind();
                }

                reader.NextResult();

                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    user.DataSource = reader;
                    user.DataValueField = "LName";
                    user.DataBind();
                }

                reader.Close();
            }
            finally
            {
                connection.Close();
            }
        }
    }

    protected void AddItem(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (Page.IsValid)
        {
            SqlConnection connection;
            SqlCommand insertData;

            string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["LakerBids"].ConnectionString;
            connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString);
            insertData = new SqlCommand("INSERT INTO Products (ProductName, ProductDesc, CategoryID, SubCatID, StatusID, UserID, ReservePrice, AuctionLength, BidID)" +
            "VALUES (@ProductName, @ProductDesc, @CategoryID, @SubCatID, 1, @UserID, @ReservePrice, @AuctionLength, NULL)", connection);

            insertData.Parameters.Add("@ProductName", System.Data.SqlDbType.NVarChar, 50);
            insertData.Parameters["@ProductName"].Value = pname.Text;

            insertData.Parameters.Add("@ProductDesc", System.Data.SqlDbType.NVarChar, 200);
            insertData.Parameters["@ProductDesc"].Value = pdesc.Text;

            insertData.Parameters.Add("@CategoryID", System.Data.SqlDbType.Int);
            insertData.Parameters["@CategoryID"].Value = pcategory.SelectedIndex;

            insertData.Parameters.Add("@SubCatID", System.Data.SqlDbType.Int);
            insertData.Parameters["@SubCatID"].Value = psubcategory.SelectedIndex;

            insertData.Parameters.Add("@UserID", System.Data.SqlDbType.Int);
            insertData.Parameters["@UserID"].Value = user.SelectedIndex + 2;

            insertData.Parameters.Add("@ReservePrice", System.Data.SqlDbType.Money);
            insertData.Parameters["@ReservePrice"].Value = Convert.ToDecimal(reserveprice.Text);

            insertData.Parameters.Add("@AuctionLength", System.Data.SqlDbType.Int);
            insertData.Parameters["@AuctionLength"].Value = Convert.ToInt32(auctionlength.Text);

            try
            {
                connection.Open();
                insertData.ExecuteNonQuery();
                Response.Redirect("Categories.aspx");
            }
            catch (Exception error)
            {
                dberror.Text = error.ToString();
            }
            finally
            {
                connection.Close();
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

You need to either use a DataSet or populate business entities within a collection and then bind to the collection.

List<Category> cats = new List<Category>();

while (reader.Read()) 
{ 
   Category cat = new Category();

   // fill properties from DataReader
   cats.Add(cat);
} 

pcategory.DataSource = cats; 
pcategory.DataValueField = "Category"; 
pcategory.DataBind();