Question

What’s the best method for handling a situation where you have an ASP.Net Dropdownlist that is used to link to another URL

edited for clarity

Here’s the basic scenario:

Dropdownlist with 5 cities bound to it

Selecting one of the cities should send me to a URL based on the city

Right now I am posting back using the ‘OnSelectedIndexChanged’ event then handling the event and redirecting to the appropriate page.

However this is causing 2 hits to the server per city selected, 1 to handle the postback and redirect, then another to render the actual page.

Is using custom javascript to construct a URL my best option?

Answer 1

You can add a client-side handler for the selection changed event and then redirect to the desired page based on the selected value:

<asp:DropDownList ID='ddl' runat='server'   onchange='document.location.href = this.value;' >     <asp:ListItem Text='a' Value='http://url1'></asp:ListItem>     <asp:ListItem Text='b' Value='http://url2'></asp:ListItem>     <asp:ListItem Text='c' Value='http://url3'></asp:ListItem>     <asp:ListItem Text='d' Value='http://url4'></asp:ListItem> </asp:DropDownList>