Help with IEnumerable Collection

IEnumerable is an Interface, it is not an object. All collections in .NET are IEnumerable. It is only a small subset of the collection that enables you to use it in a loop. You can always loop through the collection through IEnumerable and fill the dropdown item by item, but there is an alternative that is more interesting.

.NET collections also implement IList, which is what you are usually after when you want to fill a list of a grid with data.

Find what you have hidden under your IEnumerable collection, and use that type instead of IEnumerable. You can see what is hiding there by hitting a breakpoint when there is something in the collection. Examine the collection in the debugger, and you will have its type somewhere in there.

Using the collection by its real type instead of through one of its interfaces, you simply fill your dropdown the following way, assuming that yu are in a Windows Application. There is something similar but maybe somewhat different for Web applications.

yourDropDown.DataSource = yourCollectionObject; // This fills your dropdown with the collection
yourDropDown.DisplayMember = "Desc";
yourDropDown.DisplayValue="ID";

Once the user has made a selection, you can use yourDropDown.Text to retrieve the selected description, and yourDropDown.SelectedValue to get the ID.

Thank you for the explanation! So much to learn and I'm new to C#.

Would something like this work?

myProducts IList = Products.GetPlatforms();
ddlProducts.TextField = "Desc;
ddlProducts.ValueField = "ID";
ddlProducts.DataSource = myProducts;
ddlProducts.DataBind();

Thank you for your time and help explaining. I really appreciate your help! I need to read some more.