Question

I have the following code:

Dim db As New linqclassesDataContext Dim categories = (From c In db.faq_cats) NewFaqDropDownCategory.DataSource = categories NewFaqDropDownCategory.DataTextField = "category" NewFaqDropDownCategory.DataValueField = "category_id" If Not Page.IsPostBack Then     NewFaqDropDownCategory.DataBind() End If Unset(categories) Unset(db) 

One of the items under the column "category" has & in the title, and that shows up in the dropdownlist as such. Is there someway to make the list display "&" instead?

One Solution

I figured I could use the .Replace() function to do this, and I accidentally found out how:

For Each c In categories     If c.category.Contains("&") Then         c.category = c.category.Replace("&", "&")     End If   Next 

I could expand this in the future to process other values as well.

Answer 1

If there are other HTML encoded characters in there as well you could use HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(c.category). This would prevent your replace and ensure that any characters are properly decoded.

I don’t know if this is exact VB linq anonymous object syntax, but I tried.

Dim datasource = From categories In db.faq_cats _                  Select New With { .category = HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(categories.category), .category_id = categores.category_id } 

Then bind your DDL to that datasource.

You could also just use .Replace if you only need &

Dim datasource = From categories In db.faq_cats _                  Select New With { .category = categories.category.Replace('&', '&'), .category_id = categores.category_id }