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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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