Add empty item to dropdownlist of custom objects in C#

Question

We are binding a list of custom objects to an ASP.NET DropDownList in C# but we want to allow for the DropDownList to not have anything selected initially. One way of doing

Answer 1

Just working on this actually, here's what I got so far (along with a couple databinding goodies)

public interface ICanBindToObjectsKeyValuePair {
    void BindToProperties(IEnumerable bindableEnumerable, Expression> textProperty, Expression> valueProperty);
}

public class EasyBinderDropDown : DropDownList, ICanBindToObjectsKeyValuePair {
    public EasyBinderDropDown() {
        base.AppendDataBoundItems = true;
    }
    public void BindToProperties(IEnumerable bindableEnumerable,
        Expression> textProperty, Expression> valueProperty) {
        if (ShowSelectionPrompt)
            Items.Add(new ListItem(SelectionPromptText, SelectionPromptValue));
        base.DataTextField = textProperty.MemberName();
        base.DataValueField = valueProperty.MemberName();
        base.DataSource = bindableEnumerable;
        base.DataBind();
    }
    public bool ShowSelectionPrompt { get; set; }
    public string SelectionPromptText { get; set; }
    public string SelectionPromptValue { get; set; }
    public virtual IEnumerable ListItems {
        get { return Items.Cast(); }
    }
}

Notice one thing that you can do is

dropDown.BindToProperties(myCustomers, c=>c.CustomerName, c=>c.Id);