Question

I need to store an item and its corresponding price into an array and then display these.

E.g.
book at 10.00
chocolate bar at 0.85

I will populate the item and price into a dropdown. On a button click event I want to add these selections into an array.

How would I go about doing this in vb.net?

<asp:DropDownList ID="ddlItem" runat="server">
            <asp:ListItem Value="12.49">book</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="14.99">music</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="0.85">chocolate bar</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="10.00">box of chocolates 1</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="47.50">bottle of perfume 1</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="27.99">bottle of perfume 2</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="18.99">bottle of perfume</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="9.75">headache pills</asp:ListItem>
            <asp:ListItem Value="11.25">box of chocolates 2</asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDownList>

The code in the button click event seems to always overwrite what I initially added.

 Protected Sub btnAdd_Click(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnAdd.Click

        'Add items into an array list
        Dim Item As String = ddlItem.SelectedItem.Text
        Dim Price As Decimal = ddlItem.SelectedValue

        Dim ListItemCollection As ListItemCollection = New ListItemCollection

        ListItemCollection.Add(Item)

        Response.Write(ListItemCollection.Count)

    End Sub

Answer 1

On the server side / code behind, you should be able to access your DropDownList by name; ddlItem.

The ddlItem.Items member exposes a ListItemCollection, which in turn implements IEnumerable.

IEnumerable has a ToArray extension method. Therefore, it should be as simple as ddlItem.Items.ToArray().

Hope that helps.

EDIT

Having read your comment, I understand I may have misread your question. The answer is still pretty simple though, code as shown:

Protected Sub btnAdd_Click(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnAdd.Click
    Dim selectedItems = ddlItem.Items.Where(Function(n) n.Selected).ToArray()
    Response.Write(selectedItems.Count)
End Sub