asked on

How to retrieve foreign key values in Drop Down list

Hi,

I have two tables as following.

CarCategory- CategoryID,Category-Name
Car - CarID,Descriptions,Seats,Photo,CategoryID(F.K)

I am using FormView to enter the details of Car.
So when the end-user enter values in car, The user should be able to enter Descriptions,Seats,Photo,instead of entering the category id , The end user should be able to select the Category Name from the drop down list .
( The CarID is the primary key, so the end user does not need to enter the values. it will automatically increase by 1.)

I am using object-datasource and sqldatasource in my applications.
My main goal is , when user enter the values for car tables, everything will be entered.
except the category ID, I want the user to select the Category-Name from the drop down list and Category-ID should be entered automatically into the Car Table, when user select the Category-Name.

Thanks

kaminda

You can have add a datatable in to your dataset and get all the CategoryID,Category-Name
coulumns from CarCategory table to that datatable. Then bind that datatable to your dropdown list. You can set valuemember as teh categoryid and display member as category-name in your dropdown binding.
Then when saving send the dropdown.datavalue to the car table insert script.

nandithaa

You can set Category-Name as "Display member" and Category-ID as "Value member" for combo box. So combo box will list with Category Name and "cmbCategotryName.SelectedValue" will get you Category ID.

public void FillCategory()
        {
            DataTable dtbl = new DataTable();
            dtbl.Columns.Add("CategoryID");
            dtbl.Columns.Add("CategoryName");
            for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
            {
                DataRow dr = dtbl.NewRow();
                dr["CategoryID"] = i.ToString();
                dr["CategoryName"] = "Category" + i.ToString();
                dtbl.Rows.Add(dr);
            }
            cmbCategotryName.DataSource = dtbl;
            cmbCategotryName.DisplayMember = "CategoryName";
            cmbCategotryName.ValueMember = "CategoryID";
        }

        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            FillCategory();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string CategoryID = cmbCategotryName.SelectedValue.ToString();
        }

Open in new window

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

nandithaa

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

sivakugan

ASKER

Do i have to have two different object data sources to do that?

nandithaa

No, i just posted 2 methods, u can do which one suites u....

sivakugan

ASKER

Thanks