Question

What is the easiest way to export the items from an asp:listbox into a dataset?

Answer 1

This is a fairly straight forward way that should work regardless of how you populate it, can’t think of a faster way…

 public static DataTable GetListBoxItems(ListBox listBox)
    {
        DataTable dt = new DataTable();
        dt.Columns.Add("Value");
        dt.Columns.Add("Text");
        dt.Columns.Add("Selected");
        dt.Columns.Add("Attributes");


        foreach (ListItem itm in listBox.Items)
        {
            DataRow dr = dt.NewRow();
            dr[0] = itm.Value;
            dr[1] = itm.Text;
            dr[2] = itm.Selected;
            dr[3] = itm.Attributes;
            dt.Rows.Add(dr);
        }
        return dt;
    }

OR with extension method:

 public static class Extensions
    {
        public static DataTable GetListBoxItems(this ListBox listBox)
        {
            DataTable dt = new DataTable();

            dt.Columns.Add("Value");
            dt.Columns.Add("Text");
            dt.Columns.Add("Selected");
            dt.Columns.Add("Attributes");


            foreach (ListItem itm in listBox.Items)
            {
                DataRow dr = dt.NewRow();
                dr[0] = itm.Value;
                dr[1] = itm.Text;
                dr[2] = itm.Selected;
                dr[3] = itm.Attributes;
                dt.Rows.Add(dr);
            }
            return dt;
        }
    }

Then you can call it like this:

ListBox1.GetListBoxItems();