Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

Bind DropDown to Views | keyongtech

Bind DropDown to Views | keyongtech — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:59:17 GMT

Pingback from Bind DropDown to Views | keyongtech

re: Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

10basetom — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:16:03 GMT

On a related note, I noticed that when you populate a drop-down list with a data connection from a SharePoint form library, the first item of the drop-down list is always empty. Is there a way, through code or other means, to make the first item display "Select..."?

re: Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

Greg Collins — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:56:14 GMT

I added a note to the beginning of this article to identify that this method is no longer recommended. It was written before secondary data sources were available.

Secondary data sources are the correct approach to filling in drop-down options now.

re: Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

MonkeyCMonkeyDo — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:43:37 GMT

How would you do this using an ADO.NET connection in the code behind(C#) in InfoPath 2007??

Is there a way to populate a drop-down list box strictly using code?

Thank you for your expertise!

re: Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

mlansdaal — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:29:17 GMT

skrile - If you add a secondary datasource above as sirwally suggested, IP will create a secondary dataconnection called "sections". In my case, it was called "TARGETS". You will need to decide where your code is going to run that will manipulate the contents of that data source (e.g., at form load, on context change, etc.).

//Get the data source and clear out the child nodes

IXMLDOMDocument targetsDoc = thisXDocument.GetDOM( "Targets" );

IXMLDOMNode targetsNode = targetsDoc.selectSingleNode( "/TARGETS" );

targetsNode.childNodes.reset();

//Create some new child node values and add to the datasource

IXMLDOMNode t1Node = targetsDoc.createElement( "TARGET" );

t1Node.text = "1";

IXMLDOMNode t2Node = targetsDoc.createElement( "TARGET" );

t2Node.text = "2";

targetsNode.appendChild( t1Node );

targetsNode.appendChild( t2Node );

The above code caused my dropdown list to display choices of "1" and "2".

re: Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

skrile — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:29:26 GMT

sirwally...this looks very interesting. However, I'm a bit confused about the "code" that could be written to add/remove/update elements. Do you have an example?

re: Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

sirwally — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:42:48 GMT

In Step #4 above the repeating element should have been section, not sections. Also, to clarify, in Step #5 the elements you would add/remove/update would be section elements (which I guess was probably obvious :-).

re: Populate a Drop-Down List Box via Code

sirwally — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:37:51 GMT

Actually, you can populate a drop-down list via code without using a dreaded preserve code block.

Say, for example you want a list of sections in your form that will be populated programatically. You can achieve this by doing the following:

1) Create an XML (sections.xml) file that contains two identical, empty nodes within the root node. i.e.

</sections>

2) Import the XML file as a resource file.

3) Create a data connection to resource file added in Step #2.

4) Add a drop-down to the form and bind it to the data connection created in Step #3. Select the repeating element -- there should only be one (sections in this example). If InfoPath complains about not finding a repeating element, you didn't complete Step #1 correctly ;-)

5) Write code that modifies the DOM of the data connection to add/remove/update elements as needed.