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Binding Combo Box Using Generic Class

In this article I will show you a way to bind a combo box using Generic class as collection. I found it more structured approach to bind the control in that way.

Scenario – We have to populate a combo box for countries.

First of all create a class Country.cs

using System; 
public class Country { 
    public int CountryID { 
        get; 
        set; 
    } 
    public string CountryName { 
        get; 
        set; 
    } 
}

As shown in the code above I have declared 2 properties one is CountryID and other is CountryName.

Create a form add a combobox in it. Set the ValueMember property of combo box to CountryID and DisplayMember property to CountryName.

Create a generic property CountryCollection in the code behind of Form.

public List < Country > CountryCollection { 
    get; 
    set; 
}

Now add the following code in the form load event

CountryCollection = new List<Country>(); 
Country CountryObject = new Country(); 
CountryObject.CountryID = 1; 
CountryObject.CountryName = "India"; 
CountryCollection.Add(CountryObject); 
  
CountryObject = new Country(); 
CountryObject.CountryID = 2; 
CountryObject.CountryName = "Sri Lanka"; 
CountryCollection.Add(CountryObject); 
  
CountryObject = new Country(); 
CountryObject.CountryID = 3; 
CountryObject.CountryName = "Australia"; 
CountryCollection.Add(CountryObject); 
  
comboBox1.DataSource = CountryCollection;

When you run the program you can see combobox bound with three countries.

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Tuesday, February 1, 2011

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