Question

I’m running a dropdown list populated by column “CustName” from table “Customer”, and each customer has a unique id I want to use to run the queries; obviously it’s best to have the end user select by name rather than id, because it’s friendlier that way. How do I assign values to items in this databound ddl? Preferably, I’d like to assign their CustId values from the table itself. I tried simply placing the CustId field into the DataValueField attribute, but no go. Ideas?

<asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownList1" runat="server" 
           DataSourceID="SqlCustNameSource" DataTextField="CustName" 
           DataValueField="CustName" AppendDataBoundItems="true">
           <asp:ListItem Value="0" Text="Choose Customer" Selected="True"></asp:ListItem>
       </asp:DropDownList>
       <asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlCustNameSource" runat="server" 
         ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:MyConnectionString %>" 
         SelectCommand="SELECT [CustName] FROM [Customer]"></asp:SqlDataSource>

Answer 1

What exactly does “No Go” mean?

...DataValueField="CustId"...

...SelectCommand="SELECT [CustName], [CustId] FROM [Customer]"...