Question

Can anyone help me with a C# loop to populate an ASP:DropDownList. I am using the following code to bind the data to my dropdown. However, the first result doesn’t populate in the drop down list. There should be 3 however, there is only 2 in the dropdown list.

Any help is great.

        SqlDataReader dr;
        dr = sqlcmd.ExecuteReader();
        dropdown.DataSource = dr;

        while (dr.Read())
        {
            dropdown.DataValueField = "ID";
            dropdown.DataTextField = "Description";
            dropdown.DataBind();
        }

Answer 1

Since you’re binding the data reader to the drop down, you don’t need to loop at it explicitly (the call to dr.Read() is effectively eating the first element).

Try this:

SqlDataReader dr = sqlcmd.ExecuteReader();
dropdown.DataSource = dr;
dropdown.DataValueField = "ID";
dropdown.DataTextField = "Description";
dropdown.DataBind();

UPDATE

To add a default item, do this after the code above:

dropdown.Items.Insert(0, new ListItem("Please Select",""));