Question

I have a DataTemplate with a Combobox inside a ListView like this

<GridViewColumn.CellTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
    <ComboBox ItemsSource="{Binding DataContext.Dimensions, RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type ListView}}}"
                                DisplayMemberPath="Description"
                                SelectedValuePath="Id"
                                SelectedItem="{Binding DimName}"/>
</DataTemplate>

The combobox is populated correctly, but it doesn’t select the content according to underlying field (ie. Dimension.DimName).

Here’s how the ListView is declared

<ListView 
  Name="lstCriteria"
  ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto"
  Margin="5"
  AlternationCount="2" 
  ItemContainerStyle="{StaticResource CriteriaItemStyle}"
  ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource CriteriaList}}" DockPanel.Dock="Top"
  IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True">    

If I replace combobox with a TextBlock it does show the DimName Field’s value, like this

<TextBox Text="{Binding DimName}"/>

What am I missing ?

Answer 1

Does your DimName come directly from the Dimensions list?

By default, if a ComboBox’s Items is set to a custom class, it will compare the SelectedItem to an item in the ItemSource by reference. It will not match the item if they do not refer to the exact same object in memory, even if the object’s data is the same.

To get around that you can either set SelectedValue and SelectedValuePath instead of SelectedItem on your ComboBox, or you can overwrite the Equals() method of your DimName class to return true if an object’s data is equal

Edit

In regards to your comment below, is DimName a Dimension object? If so then setting SelectedItem should work fine. If it’s an long you’ll need to set SelectedValue, not SelectedItem. If it’s something else, you may need a converter to convert it into a Dimension object