How to: Populate List Web Server Controls from a Data Source
The information in this topic applies to the following Web server controls:
You can use a list Web server control to display items that are read from a data source. Each item in the control corresponds to an item — such as a row in a data table — in the data source. The control can display one field from the source and can optionally use a second field as the item value.
You can combine list items that you create at design time with list items that are populated from a data source by setting the AppendDataBoundItems property of a list control to true. A typical example is to create a list item with the text "Select an item" as the first item for a DropDownList control. You can then populate the remaining items in the DropDownList control from the data source.
To populate a list Web server control from a data source
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Add a data source control to the page, such as the SqlDataSource control or the ObjectDataSource control.
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Use the Data Source Configuration Wizard to define the connection and the query, or data-retrieval method, for the data source control.
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Right-click the list control and click Show Smart Tag.
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In the task menu, click Choose Data Source.
The Data Source Configuration Wizard is displayed.
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In the Select a data source list, click the data source control that you added in Step 1.
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In the Select a data field to display list, click the data field that you want to display in the control.
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Optionally, in the Select a data field for the value list, click the data field to store as the value of each item.
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Optionally, if the control already contains statically defined list items that you want to retain when the list is populated from a data source, set the control's AppendDataBoundItems property to true.