I'd like to bind a ComboBox
to a DataTable
(I cannot alter its original schema)
cbo.DataSource = tbldata;
cbo.DataTextField = "Name";
cbo.DataValueField = "GUID";
cbo.DataBind();
I want the ComboBox
show tbldata.Name + tbldata.Surname
.
Of course adding the new name+surname as a field to the tbldata
just before binding is possible, but I am hoping for a more elegant solution along the lines of (pseudocode)
cbo.DataTextField = "Name";
cbo.DataTextField += "Surname";
The calculated column solution is probably the best one. But if you can't alter the data table's schema to add that, you can loop through the table and populate a new collection that will serve as the data source.
var dict = new Dictionary<Guid, string>();
foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows)
{
dict.Add(row["GUID"], row["Name"] + " " + row["Surname"]);
}
cbo.DataSource = dict;
cbo.DataTextField = "Value";
cbo.DataValueField = "Key";
cbo.DataBind();
Obviously this isn't as performant as binding directly to the DataTable but I wouldn't worry about that unless the table has thousands of rows.