Drop Down Button Databinding. Or dynamically adding and removing items.

[Matt]

Hi,

First let me stay, these are the best controls we have used! Our company has been using your controls for about 4 months now, telerik > devexpress.

So, We are working on a very simple winform. We have added a RadDropDownButton to this form. We want to bind this drop down like you would a combobox, but I have noticed there is no DataSource method for this. How would we dynamically add and remove items from this list at runtime from a SQL database?

Sorry if this is a duplicate question, i did search at no avail.

We have the latest version of the controls, .net 4.0, C#, VS2010,WIN7 x64. 


Thank you!

[Jack]

Hi Matt,

Thank you for this question.

RadDropDownButton is not a data bound control and because of this it does not contain a DataSource property. You have to add/remove items manually by accessing its Items collection. Only data bound controls like RadGridView, RadTreeView or RadListControl expose a DataSource property in WinForms. 

All the best,
Jack
the Telerik team

[Matt]

Jack,

Thank you for the reply. 

I have ended up adding items dynamically using the following.

string[] filePaths = Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\Templates\", "*.docx");

foreach (string s in filePaths)
{
      _docGenDropDownButton.Items.Add(new RadMenuItem(s.ToString()));
}

how could I then handle the click event for each item?

Thank you for your time.

-Matt

[Jack]

Hi Matt,

You should handle the Click event for RadMenuItem. I modified your code snippet to demonstrate this:

string[] filePaths = Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\Templates\", "*.docx");

foreach (string s in filePaths)
{
    RadMenuItem menu = new RadMenuItem(s.ToString());
    menu.Click += new EventHandler(menu_Click);
    _docGenDropDownButton.Items.Add();
}

void menu_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

}

Best wishes,
Jack
the Telerik team

[Matt]

Thank you again for your answer.

That works perfectly!

However, how do I know which item i have clicked?

I'm sure I need to cast the EventArgs as something?

Thanx for the great customer support!

-Matt

[Jack]

Hi Matt,

The sender argument of the event contains the RadMenuItem. Consider the following example:

void item_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    RadMenuItem item = (RadMenuItem)sender;
    //...
}

Greetings,
the Telerik team

[Matt]

Thank you for the reply.

I have done this already, I guess I should have better asked the question.

How do I get the text from the item clicked? I did a quick watch on "item" and cannot find it :/



-Matt

[Jack]

Hi Matt,

I am not sure whether I understand the issue correctly. You can use the Text property of RadMenuItem in order to access the item text. Here is a sample:

void item_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    RadMenuItem item = (RadMenuItem)sender;
    string text = item.Text;
    //...
}

Regards,

Jack
the Telerik team