Determining the Selection in a List Web Server Control

Visual Basic and Visual C# Concepts

The information in this topic applies to all list Web server controls: ListBox, DropDownList, CheckBoxList, and RadioButtonList.

One of the most common tasks in working with a list Web server control is to determine what item or items users have selected. The procedure varies depending on whether the list control allows single or multiple selections.

Use the following procedure when working with the DropDownList control, the RadioButtonList control, and a single-selection ListBox control.

Note When you data bind a list control (by calling its DataBind method), the current list selection is lost. You generally do not want to call the DataBind method on each round trip (that is, in the page initialization without checking for a post-back), because doing so replaces the values in controls. For details, see Data Binding Multi-Record Web Server Controls.

To determine the selection in a single-selection list control

Use one of the following methods:
- To get the index value of the selected item, read the value of the SelectedIndex property. The index is zero-based. If nothing has been selected, the value of the property is -1.
- To get the contents of the selected item, get the control's SelectedItem property. This property returns an object of type ListItem. You can get the contents of the selected item by getting the Text or Value property of the object.
  Security Note Controls in a Web Forms page can include potentially malicious client script. By default, the Web Forms page validates that user input does not include script or HTML elements. For more information, see Scripting Exploits and Protecting Against Script Exploits in a Web Application.
The following example shows how you can test which item is selected in a RadioButtonList control. The code first checks that there is a selection at all by reading the value of the SelectedIndex property, which is set to -1 until the user selects an item. It then gets the SelectedItem object and displays that object's Text property.
```
' Visual Basic
    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

   ' Is anything selected? The index is -1 if nothing is selected.
   If RadioButtonList1.SelectedIndex > -1 Then
      Label1.Text="You chose: " & RadioButtonList1.SelectedItem.Text
   End If
End Sub

// C#
public void Button1_Click (object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
   // Is anything selected? The index is -1 if nothing is selected.
   if (RadioButtonList1.SelectedIndex > -1) {
      // The contents of the selection is available in the 
      // SelectedItem objects, which provides the Text, Value,
      // and Selected properties.
      Label1.Text="You chose: " + RadioButtonList1.SelectedItem.Text;
   }
}
```

If the list control supports multiple selections, you must loop through the control and check for selected items one by one.

To determine the selection in a multi-selection list control

Loop through the control's Items collection and test the Selected property of every individual item.

The following example shows how you can test selections in a multi-selection ListBox control called ListBox1. The code displays a list of selected items in a label.

' Visual Basic
Public Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
   Dim msg As String
   Dim li As ListItem
   msg = ""
   For Each li In ListBox1.Items
      If li.Selected = True Then
         msg = msg & "<BR>" & li.Text & " selected."
   End If
   Next
   Label1.Text = msg
End Sub

// C#
public void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
   // Text that will display selected items
   string msg = "" ;   
   foreach(ListItem li in ListBox1.Items)
   {
      if(li.Selected == true)
         {
            msg += "<BR>" + li.Text + " is selected.";
         }
   }
   Label1.Text = msg;
}

See Also