Question

I am trying to work thru some sample code.
The code I am having a problem with is:

private ListControl GetSelectedList()
{
  return (ListControl)FindControl(ddlControls.SelectedItem.Value);
}

ddlControls is a DropDownListBoxControl collection
What does the ddlControls.SelectedItem.Value return (its a numeric value, but I don’t know what it represents)?

2nd question: What is return (ListControl)FindControl(ddlControls.SelectedItem.Value); ?

Thanks

Answer 1

SelectedItem.Value, as the name suggests, is the value of the currently selected item in the drop-down list. For example, if this were a list of months and someone had selected “September”, this property has the value “September”.

what is return (ListControl)FindControl(ddlControls.SelectedItem.Value);

FindControl is a method that looks up controls by their id. Using our example from before, it would try to find a control with the name “September”. The (ListControl) at the beginning is a cast; the GetSelectedList() method is implicitly assuming that every possible answer you could get from ddlControls is the name of another ListControl. (This might not be a good idea depending on the circumstances.)

The result — that is, the control whose id is the same as the currently selected value in ddlControls — is then returned, and that’s the result of GetSelectedList().