Question

I am trying to retrieve the displayed values of all items present in a comboBox.

First case: if the comboBox has been filled using a DataSource:

comboBox.DataSource = myDataSet.Tables[0];
comboBox.DisplayMember = "value";
comboBox.ValueMember = "id";

…I use this code:

foreach (DataRowView rowView in comboBox.Items) {
    String value = rowView.Row.ItemArray[1].ToString();
    // 1 corresponds to the displayed members
    // Do something with value
}

Second case: if the comboBox has been filled with the comboBox.Items.Add("blah blah"), I use the same code, except I have to look in the first dimension of the ItemArray:

foreach (DataRowView rowView in comboBox.Items) {
    String value = rowView.Row.ItemArray[0].ToString();
    // 0 corresponds to the displayed members
    // Do something with value
}

Now I would like to be able to retrieve all values without knowing the scheme used to fill the comboBox. Thus, I don’t know if I have to use ItemArray[0] or ItemArray[1]. Is it possible? How could I do that?

Answer 1

You can try something like this:

        string displayedText;
        DataRowView drw = null;

        foreach (var item in comboBox1.Items)
        {
            drw = item as DataRowView;
            displayedText = null;

            if (drw != null)
            {
                displayedText = drw[comboBox1.DisplayMember].ToString();
            }
            else if (item is string)
            {
                displayedText = item.ToString();
            }
        }