Question

I’ve read that combo boxes cannot have multiple columns. Which leaves me a bit stuck since what I want to do is display one field from a table, but return the corresponding value from a second field in the same table i.e.

I’d like to show CustomerNames in the combo box, but when the user selects a name, the CustomerID field is returned instead. Whats the best work around for this?

Answer 1

You don’t need multiple columns to implement it.

class Member
{
    public string Name{get;set;}
    public string Address{get;set;}
    public int ID{get;set;}

    public string Description
    {
        get
        {
            return string.Format("{0}, {1}", Name, Address);
        }
    }
}

var members = new []
{
   new Member(){ID = 1, Name = "John", Address = "Addr 1"},
   new Member(){ID = 2, Name = "Mary", Address = "Addr 2"}
};

m_ComboBox.DataSource = members;
m_ComboBox.DisplayMember = "Description"
m_ComboBox.ValueMember = "ID";

now you can access seleceted ID

var selectedID = m_ComboBox.CelectedValue();