[Solved] SelectedIndex is set when it shouldn't be

[Sean Overman]

I'm using a RadComboBox with a definition like this:

<tel:RadComboBox ID="ChooseCustomer" runat="server" Width="200" DropDownWidth="300"  EmptyMessage="Type a customer name" AllowCustomText="true" MarkFirstMatch="true" >
    <CollapseAnimation Duration="50" />
    <ExpandAnimation Duration="50" />
</tel:RadComboBox>

in the code behind:
During page load and ! postback... something like this:

IList<Customer> all = EntityPersister.GetAll<Customer>();
ChooseCustomer.DataSource = all;
ChooseCustomer.DataTextField = "CustomerName";
ChooseCustomer.DataValueField = "ID";
ChooseCustomer.DataBind();

now... the problem comes when a CustomerName is a blank string.

in a subsequent postback, then SelectedIndex property is set to the first "Blank" databound item.  but the front end still says "Type a customer name" 

Obviously the user has not changed the drop down, but its still reporting erroneously that the selected index is chosen.

Thanks
Sean

[Genady Sergeev]

Hello Sean Overman,

Well this is expected behavior, the description of the EmptyMessage property is as follows:
"EmptyMessage is displayed when the text is empty".

What do you want to happen when item with no text is selected? RadComboBox displaying empty string? If so, you can do that via setting the Text property of the RadCombo to 1 interval string i.e. to " ".

if (RadComboBox1.SelectedItem.Text == string.Empty)
        {
            RadComboBox1.SelectedItem.Text = " ";
        }

Regards,
Genady Sergeev
the Telerik team

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