ASP.net Gridview Itemtemplate Dropdownlist

Question

I am using C# ASP.net, and relative new to it, and need to accomplish below.

In my VS2010 web application project I have webform with a Gridview which fetches the data from a table.

In the Grid, I have Commandfiled Button (column1) and Item template with Dropdownlist (column2).

Use case is, user first selects one listitem from 3 list items (H, L and M) and then selects command button.

I am not able to figure out how to extract selected listitem from a selected row

protected void GridView2_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

    GridViewRow row = GridView2.SelectedRow;
    Label4.Text = "You selected " + row.Cells[4].Text + "."; 
    Label5.Text = "You selected this list item from dropdownlist " + ???? ; 
}

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The GridViewRow object provides the method FindControl (as do all container controls) to get access to a control in the row by its id. For example, if your DropDownList has an id of MyDropDown, you could use the following to access its selected value:

GridViewRow row = GridView2.SelectedRow;
DropDownList MyDropDown = row.FindControl("MyDropDown") as DropDownList;
string theValue = MyDropDown.SelectedValue;
// now do something with theValue

This is the recommended method for accessing all controls in your GridView. You want to avoid doing things like row.Cells[#] as much as possible, because it easily breaks when you re-arrange or add/remove columns from your GridView.