Is it possible to give differing colors to the items in a DropDownList object (say yellow)?. I want certain items in my list to be yellow (background/hilighting?) based on database information while others are standard colors, etc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks,
David

__________________
Thanks,
David

You can use style tags to give the items a different color. E.g.:

<option style="background-color: red;">Some Option</option>
<option style="background-color: green;">Some Option</option>

To change these style settings, you need to hook some event in your Code Behind. What event this is, depends on the location where the DropDownList control is used.

If it's placed directly in the page, you can loop through the control's Items collection.

If the item is inside, say, a GridView, you'll need to use the grid's ItemDataBound event.

HtH,

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
While typing this post, I was listening to: Have a little faith in me(bonus live) by Ilse De Lange (Track 14 from the album: Here I Am - 1998-2003) What's This?

OK. This seems to work, except that once a postback occurs, the style is lost

I see alot of postings doing a search that suggests this is a bug in VS.

IS there a way to get around this?

Thanks,
David

Can you show some code, so we can see how you add the styles?

It's probably not a bug; the styles are not persisted in view state but the data is. So, on post back, the data is added to the drop down again, but ItemDataBound is not fired (because you're not databinding again).

I think there are two ways to fix this: rebind on every page load (thus including post backs) or loop through the drop-down diagnosing the Items on each post back.

Cheers,

Imar
P.S. If it was a bug, it would be a .NET Framework bug; VS.NET has nothing to do with this.
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
While typing this post, I was listening to: Sick Sad Little World by Incubus (Track 6 from the album: A Crow Left Of The Murder...) What's This?

bit of code inside the !Page.ISPostBack of the PAGE_LOAD


                dr = sc.ExecuteReader();
                while (dr.Read())
                {
                    ListItem li = new ListItem(dr["FULLNAME"].ToString() + " | " + dr["INC_NUMBER_ID"].ToString() + " | " + dr["INC_DATE_OCCURED"].ToString(), dr["INC_NUMBER_ID"].ToString());
                    if ((Convert.ToBoolean(dr["INC_CAUSE_DEFECTIVE_EQUIP"]) == false) &&
                         (Convert.ToBoolean(dr["INC_CAUSE_INADEQUATE_PROC"]) == false) &&
                         (Convert.ToBoolean(dr["INC_CAUSE_PERSONAL_RESP"]) == false))
                    {
                        Color color = Color.Yellow;
                        string htmlColor = string.Format("#{0:X2}{1:X2}{2:X2}", color.R, color.G, color.B);
                        li.Attributes.Add("style", String.Format("background-color: {0}", htmlColor));
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Color color = Color.White;
                        string htmlColor = string.Format("#{0:X2}{1:X2}{2:X2}", color.R, color.G, color.B);
                        li.Attributes.Add("style", String.Format("background-color: {0}", htmlColor));
                    }
                    inclist.Items.Add(li);
                }
                dr.Close();




Thanks,
David

Right, that makes sense.

So, I guess my earlier assumption is true. Since styles are not persisted in ViewState, they're not applied if you don't rebind the data on PostBack.

The problem in your scenario is that the values of your drop-downs are not (exclusively) used for determining the right styles. So, on PostBack, you cannot simply through the Items collection of the drop-down, diagnose the Value or Text properties and reapply the styles.

You could fix that by rebinding the data on PostBack as well, but then you loose changes the user made in the selected indices.

What you could is, on PostBack, get the data from the DataSource again, and the use that data to reapply the styles to the drop-down list items, without rebinding the data to the control. Not a pretty solution, but it might do the trick.

Cheers,

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

That seemed to do it.

:D

Thanks,
David

For the purpose of the archive, can you "what" did it?

Did you get the data on PostBack again?

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

I Followed the advice on Postback to :

 get the data from the DataSource again, and the use that data to
reapply the styles to the drop-down list items

"That" does it.

Thanks,
David