How to create a Winforms Combobox with Label and Value?

Question

I am mostly an ASP.NET developer but I am working on a WinForms app and noticed a large difference between the ASP.NET combobox (html select) and that of WinForms. I found (maybe incorrectly so) that WinForm's combobox only has a "label" whereas ASP.NET allows you to specify a "label" and a "value".

I am looking to use a WinForms combobox (or another comparable control) with a label and a value (Foobar / 42329). Is this possible? I have attempted to search for the answer but haven't come up with much. If there is no way to accomplish that, how does one go ahead and design a WinForm combobox that would represent say Cities with their associated database id?

• Toronto / 2324
• Montreal / 64547
• Vancouver / 1213

Answer 1

I can think of a few ways:

• override the ToString() of a City class to return Name + " / " + Id;
• ditto, but with a TypeConverter
• add a DisplayText property that return the same, and use DisplayMember
• build a shim class for the data

For the last:

var data = cities.Select(city => new {      Id = city.Id, Text = city.Name + " / " + city.Id }).ToList(); cbo.ValueMember = "Id"; cbo.DisplayMember = "Text"; cbo.DataSource = data; 

Answer 2

Assuming that your values are unique, you can first populate a dictionary then bind the combobox to the dictionary. Unfortunately databinding requires an IList or an IListSource so you have to wrap it in Binding Source. I found the solution here.

    private void PopulateComboBox()     {         var dict = new Dictionary<int, string>();         dict.Add(2324, "Toronto");         dict.Add(64547, "Vancouver");         dict.Add(42329, "Foobar");          comboBox1.DataSource = new BindingSource(dict, null);         comboBox1.DisplayMember = "Value";         comboBox1.ValueMember = "Key";     }