How do you bind an Enum to a DropDownList control in ASP.NET?

Question

Let\'s say I have the following simple enum:

enum Response
{
    Yes = 1,
    No = 2,
    Maybe = 3
}

How can I bind this enum to a DropDow

Answer 1

As others have already said - don't databind to an enum, unless you need to bind to different enums depending on situation. There are several ways to do this, a couple of examples below.

ObjectDataSource

A declarative way of doing it with ObjectDataSource. First, create a BusinessObject class that will return the List to bind the DropDownList to:

public class DropDownData
{
    enum Responses { Yes = 1, No = 2, Maybe = 3 }

    public String Text { get; set; }
    public int Value { get; set; }

    public List GetList()
    {
        var items = new List();
        foreach (int value in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Responses)))
        {
            items.Add(new DropDownData
                          {
                              Text = Enum.GetName(typeof (Responses), value),
                              Value = value
                          });
        }
        return items;
    }
}

Then add some HTML markup to the ASPX page to point to this BO class:

This option requires no code behind.

Code Behind DataBind

To minimize the HTML in the ASPX page and do bind in Code Behind:

enum Responses { Yes = 1, No = 2, Maybe = 3 }

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!IsPostBack)
    {
        foreach (int value in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Responses)))
        {
            DropDownList1.Items.Add(new ListItem(Enum.GetName(typeof(Responses), value), value.ToString()));
        }
    }
}

Anyway, the trick is to let the Enum type methods of GetValues, GetNames etc. to do work for you.