Question

i really don’t get how I can use a spinner just like asp.net’s dropdownlist, where you have one value that is displayed for the user, and a hidden custom value that I can use with the change event.

like in asp.net, you can just do this:

string value = "somevalue";
dropdownlistID.Items.Add(new ListItem("text",value));

and in the event I can just retrieve it with dropdownlistID.SelectedValue

If anyone have a link that can explain this to me, or any other suggestions, please help!
I’m making an android app in vs2010 with mono for android.

Regards, Marcus

Answer 1

you need to create an ArrayAdapter, the same way you would to fill a ListView.

 spinTime = FindViewById<Spinner>(Resource.Id.spinTimeChoose);
 List<string> spinnerItems = new List<string>();
 ArrayAdapter adapter  new ArrayAdapter<string> (this,Android.Resource.Layout.SimpleSpinnerItem,spinnerItems);

 adapter.SetDropDownViewResource(Android.Resource.Layout.SimpleSpinnerDropDownItem);
 spinTime.Adapter = adapter;
 spinTime.ItemSelected += (s, e) =>
 { 
  Log.Debug("SpinnerItems", spinnerItems[e.Position]);           
 }

hope it helps

edit: i think i now get your question 🙂
below is an example for an custom Adapter for a list of clearances. sorry for the hardcoded german strings. The important part is the getView method. It gets called everytime a new listitem gets into the view of the user. you have to inflate a new view, or if not null reuse the convertView and fill it with the values from your list.

class ClearanceListAdapter : BaseAdapter
{
    private readonly List<Clearance> _clearances;
    private readonly Activity _context;

    public ClearanceListAdapter(List<Clearance> Clearances, Activity context)
    {
        _clearances = Clearances;
        _context = context;
    }

    public override int Count
    {
        get { return _clearances.Count(); }
    }

    public override Java.Lang.Object GetItem(int position)
    {
        return null;
    }

    public override long GetItemId(int position)
    {
        return position;
    }

    public Clearance GetClearance (int position)
    {
        return _clearances.ElementAt(position);

    }

    public override Android.Views.View GetView(int position, Android.Views.View convertView, Android.Views.ViewGroup parent)
    {

        View view = (convertView ?? _context.LayoutInflater.Inflate(Resource.Layout.ClearanceListItem, parent, false));

        Clearance clearance = _clearances[position];


        view.FindViewById<TextView>(Resource.Id.txtClearanceDescription).Text = clearance.Description;
        view.FindViewById<TextView>(Resource.Id.txtStartDate).Text = clearance.Start.ToString("g");
        view.FindViewById<TextView>(Resource.Id.txtEndDate).Text = clearance.End.ToString("g");

        return view;
    }
}