What is the proper way to load up a ListBox?

Question

What is the proper way to load a ListBox in C# .NET 2.0 Winforms?

I thought I could just bind it to a DataTable. No such luck.
I thought I could bind it with a Dictionary. No luck.

Do I have to write an class called KeyValuePair, and then use List<KeyValuePair> just to be able to load this thing with objects? Maybe I am missing something obvious. I want my display text and values to be different values.

Answer 1

Simple code example. Say you have a Person class with 3 properties. FirstName, LastName and Age. Say you want to bind your listbox to a collection of Person objects. You want the display to show the first name, but the value to be the age. Here's how you would do it:

List<Person> people = new List<Person>(); people.Add(new Person { Age = 25, FirstName = "Alex", LastName = "Johnson" }); people.Add(new Person { Age = 23, FirstName = "Jack", LastName = "Jones" }); people.Add(new Person { Age = 35, FirstName = "Mike", LastName = "Williams" }); people.Add(new Person { Age = 25, FirstName = "Gill", LastName = "JAckson" }); this.listBox1.DataSource = people; this.listBox1.DisplayMember = "FirstName"; this.listBox1.ValueMember = "Age"; 

The trick is the DisplayMember, and the ValueMember.

Answer 2

You can bind a DataTable directly...

listbox.ValueMember = "your_id_field"; listbox.DisplayMember = "your_display_field"; listbox.DataSource = dataTable;