Question

I’ve got a string array like this:

string[] month = {"Month", "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec" };

I want to databind this to a dropdown.

I want the user to see these month names but when the user selects March (for example), I want to use the number 3 rather than “Mar”.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Probably the quickest way to do this is just to make a list of key value pairs:

        Dictionary<string, int> myList = new Dictionary<string, int>();
        myList.Add("Jan", 1);
        myList.Add("Feb", 2);

        System.Web.UI.WebControls.DropDownList drodown = new System.Web.UI.WebControls.DropDownList();
        drodown.DataSource = myList;
        drodown.DataTextField = "key";
        drodown.DataValueField = "value";
        drodown.DataBind();

        int monthValue = int.Parse(drodown.SelectedValue);

this was just coded up on the fly so excuse any little error in it. But it should give you a good idea of how to do what you want.