Question

I have a DropDownList in my asp.net web page.
The RequiredFieldValidator is not working. Thanks for looking at my code.

<asp:DropDownList ID="Organization" runat="server"
    DataSourceID="OrganizationList"
    DataTextField="OrgName" DataValueField="OrgCode" CausesValidation="True">
</asp:DropDownList>

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="OrganizationList" runat="server"
    ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:MembershipDB %>"
    SelectCommand="Admin_GetOrganizationDropDown" 
    SelectCommandType="StoredProcedure"></asp:SqlDataSource>

<asp:RequiredFieldValidator runat="server" ID="RequiredFieldValidatorOrg"
    ControlToValidate="Organization"
    ErrorMessage="Organization is required." 
    Display="Dynamic" />

Answer 1

If you have not allready done it you should have a value that means that you are not selecting anything. Like this:

 Organization.Insert(0,new ListItem("--Select--","0"));

And then you need to tell the asp:RequiredFieldValidator to check for a value that you are not allowing. So InitialValue value should be 0. Like this:

<asp:RequiredFieldValidator InitialValue="0"

Then when the --Select-- option is chosen and you try to submit the page. The asp:RequiredFieldValidator will fire.

Edit

I don’t like the look of the bit of sql you are showing:

Select Distinct 
    'name' As [OrgCode],'Please Select' As [OrgName] 
FROM [MedOrganization] 
Union All 
SELECT [OrgCode], [OrgName] FROM [MedOrganization]

Not a performance vise good piece of sql code. You can do this instead:

Select
    'name' As [OrgCode],'Please Select' As [OrgName] 
Union All 
SELECT [OrgCode], [OrgName] FROM [MedOrganization]

Why use the distinct there? When you can just select like above. Back to the question. You can try having the InitialValue set to name like this:

<asp:RequiredFieldValidator InitialValue="name"