Question

I have a dropdownlist that I want to populate with a specific value and specific text. I’m not using a datasource but I am manually making a connection and retrieving data in code. How can I populate this dropdownlist? If I read the data with a datareader and increment an array I only get either the value or the text. This is what I have so far, but it is completely wrong:

//connection string etc goes here
Dbcmd2.CommandText = "select dept,deptname from table"

Dim dr As SqlClient.SqlDataReader
    dr = Dbcmd2.ExecuteReader
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim arydept As New arraylist
    While dr.Read
       arydept.Add(dr1("dept"))
    End While

    ddldept.datasource = arydept
    ddldept.DataTextField = ????????
    ddldept.DataValueField = dr("dept")
    ddldept.DataBind()

How can I get this to work without having to create a class object for Department? Is there anyway or should I create the class object?

Answer 1

Is there any particular reason you can do it the normal way?

Dbcmd2.CommandText = "select dept,deptname from table"
Dim dr As SqlClient.SqlDataReader = Dbcmd2.ExecuteReader
While dr.Read() 
  ddldept.Items.Add(new ListItem(dr("deptname"),dr("dept"))
End While
' ddldept is now populated with all items from the query