Question

<ComboBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0" Width="Auto" Name="cmbBudgetYear">
   <ComboBoxItem Content="2009" />
   <ComboBoxItem Content="2010" />
   <ComboBoxItem Content="2011" />
   <ComboBoxItem Content="2012" />
</ComboBox>

How do I set the selected item to the current year in the code behind?

Something like…

cmbBudgetYear.SelectedItem = cmbBudgetYear.Items(
                                         get the item with the Now.Year.ToString)

Answer 1

There exist many ways to do this but for your example, I would change the ComboBox-Tag as follows:

<ComboBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0" 
          Name="cmbBudgetYear" SelectedValuePath="Content">

I added the attribute-defition SelectedValuePath="Content". After that you can set the value with a corresponding string, e.g.:

cmbBudgetYear.SelectedValue = "2009";

Take care that the value must be a string. For your example, use

cmbBudgetYear.SelectedValue = DateTime.Now.Year.ToString();

An additional idea

If you use the code-behind anyway, would it be a possibility to fill the combobox with integers. Someting like:

for(int y=DateTime.Now.Year;y>DateTime.Now.Year-10;y--){
 cmbBudgetYear.Items.Add(y);
}

..then you can select the values extremly simple like

cmbBudgetYear.SelectedValue = 2009;

… and you would have also other advantages.