Question

I have a situation that is pretty simple, and I’d like to know the ideal way to do it.

I have a combo box. Each line of the combo box corresponds to a particular strategy object.

What is the proper way to map the combo box lines to the strategy object.

The way I was doing it seems overly complicated, and I’m pretty much guaranteed there is a simple standard way to do this.

Thank you.

EDIT:

I had the data in a Dictionary, where the string was the text for the combobox, and the object was the strategy… But this isn’t ordered… And I just know there is some extremely simple way to do it.

SOLUTION:
I used this solution, not feeling comfortable putting presentation logic in the data classes:

private partial class HtmlTransformState : AbstractHtmlEditFormState
{
private Dictionary<string, ITransformStrategy> strategies = new Dictionary<string, ITransformStrategy>() 
{ 
    { "Simple URL", new TransformStrategy<SimpleUrlCodeExtractor>() }, 
    { "Overview", new TransformStrategy<OverviewCodeExtractor>() },  
    { "Video List", new TransformStrategy<VideoListCodeExtractor>() }, 
    { "Video List No MbORKb", new TransformStrategy<VideoListNoMBOrKBAndNoLinksAllowedCodeExtractor>() },
    { "Blue Mountain 2007", new TransformStrategy<BlueMountain2007CodeExtractor>() },
    { "Four Gates", new TransformStrategy<FourGatesCodeExtractor>() },
    { "General", new TransformStrategy<GeneralCodeExtractor>() }
};
public override void DrawForm()
{
    // ...
    ParentForm.cmboTransformStrategy.DataSource = new BindingSource(strategies, null);
    ParentForm.cmboTransformStrategy.DisplayMember = "Key";
    ParentForm.cmboTransformStrategy.ValueMember = "Value";
}

public override IEnumerable<string> ProcessHtml(string urlPath)
{
    ITransformStrategy transformStrategy = (ITransformStrategy)ParentForm.cmboTransformStrategy.SelectedValue;

    // Do some stuff with 'transformStrategy'
}

}

Answer 1

Do you mean something like the following?

public class Strategy
{
    private string _name = "default";
    public string Name
    {
         get { return _name; }
        set { _name = value; }
    }

    public Strategy(string name)
{
        _name = name;
    }
}

Then in form load (you need to have a combo box on that form):

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    List<Strategy> ls = new List<Strategy>();
    ls.Add(new Strategy("First"));
    ls.Add(new Strategy("Second"));
    ls.Add(new Strategy("Third"));

    comboBox1.DataSource = ls;
    comboBox1.DisplayMember = "Name";
}