Expanding on this great textbook, I'm wanting to concatenate two data fields into a dropdownlist box.

In ASP Classic, I would just take the two fields (e.g, rst(0) and rst(1)) and concatenate them with an "&". For example, "LastName, FirstName" would be like this: rst(0) & ", " & rst(1) with a hidden Id number to requery the database.

Can this be done in an <asp:DropDownList DataTextField="LName"> ? Or, does this have to be done in CodeBehind? I'm looking for something like:
<asp:... DataTextField = "LName & FName">

Thanks.

Patrick W
Texas

Hi Patrick,

Glad to hear your like the book.

You can't do this in markup, but you could do it in Code Behind. However, this requires quite a bit of code, so it's probably easier to do this in SQL:

SELECT FirstName, LastName, FirstName + " " + LastName AS FullName

And then use FullName to bind the DDL. You may need some NULL checking to avoid empty items, but other than that, this should do the trick.

Hope this helps,

Imar

__________________
Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
Follow me on Twitter

Author of Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 : in C# and VB, Beginning ASP.NET Web Pages with WebMatrix
and Beginning ASP.NET 4 : in C# and VB.
Did this post help you? Click the button below this post to show your appreciation!

Imar,

Yes, your book is excellent--meticulously researched and written.

Your solution worked great. Now, I need to populate a grid with the user selection from DropDownList (i.e., another trip to the database). I think the answer is in Chapter 13, and I'm getting ready to review it one more time.

I'll be back in contact with you if I'm unsuccessful...

Thanks again for your speedy response!

Patrick