How to get multiple selected values and items from listbox ?

Question

Hi people,

how do i extract out the selected items and values from a multiple selected enabled listbox through C# code ?

Answer 1

You can use the SelectedItems property. It will give you a collection of all selected items.

Answer 2

Andreas Johansson wrote:

You can use the SelectedItems property. It will give you a collection of all selected items.

Hi Andreas,

thanks for the reply, yup this is where i am stuck, how do i actually reiterate throigh the collection to obtain the items and values ?

Answer 3

You can do a for or a ForEach. And SelectedItem[index] get you the item in the index.

Answer 4

This is an example using strings as the objects in the listbox.

Windows application in C# and I added a listbox and a button.

private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)         {             listBox1.Items.Add("Item1");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item2");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item3");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item4");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item5");         }         private void button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)         {             String strItem;             foreach(Object selecteditem in listBox1.SelectedItems)             {                 strItem = selecteditem as String;                 System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(strItem);                 //Process(strItem);             }         }

Answer 5

Andreas Johansson wrote:

This is an example using strings as the objects in the listbox. Windows application in C# and I added a listbox and a button.         private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)         {             listBox1.Items.Add("Item1");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item2");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item3");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item4");             listBox1.Items.Add("Item5");         }         private void button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)         {             String strItem;             foreach(Object selecteditem in listBox1.SelectedItems)             {                 strItem = selecteditem as String;                 System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(strItem);                 //Process(strItem);             }         }

Hi Andreas thanks for the example it really help greatly..How would i extract the associated selected value associated with each item as i iterate through the collection ? And does the method exist for .NET forms ? Because i am trying todebug a web based application that was written in c#

Answer 6

That will be quite different actually. ListBox in ASP.NET has no SelectedItems property. But it has a collection of ListItem that you can iterate through and see what is selected and not

foreach(ListItem listItem in listBox1.Items)     {        if (listItem.Selected == True)        {           //listItem.Value contains the value of the selected item           //listItem.Text is the text displayed in the listbox of the selected item        }     }

Answer 7

Maybe this can be useful for others dealing with lisbox selected values

If you have DataSource for that listBox use this.

foreach (DataRowView objDataRowView in listBox1.SelectedItems)

{

            MessageBox.Show("My value: " + objDataRowView["id"].ToString());

}

Crazy man its working!!!

Answer 8

Hallo, i've got the same problem and i work with .net Framework 1.1, how can i do?

Answer 9

Mitch0820 wrote:

Hallo, i've got the same problem and i work with .net Framework 1.1, how can i do?

 

The SelectedItems property should be supported in 1.1 also. What problem are you experiencing?

Answer 10

I work with .Net Framework 1.1 and with Asp.Net ListBox and there isn't the SelectedItems property.

The SelectionMode property of the ListBox is set to "Multiple" but if i select multiple rows and i loop for all the items only the first selected items is marked as selected.

 

 

 

 

Answer 11

If you look at my third reply in this thread it is for ASP.NET.

 

Code Snippet

foreach(ListItem listItem in listBox1.Items)
 {
    if (listItem.Selected == True)
    {
       //listItem.Value contains the value of the selected item
       //listItem.Text is the text displayed in the listbox of the selected item
    }
 }

 

If you have any further questions regarding ASP.NET development and its controls you should check out the ASP.NET forums that cover ASP.NET web development.

http://forums.asp.net

 

Answer 12

So how to get the selected VALUES in a ListBox in windows form? I don't want the text, I don't want the index, I just want the values of the selected items. How can this be done?

 

 

Answer 13

Ashraf Gawdat wrote:

So how to get the selected VALUES in a ListBox in windows form? I don't want the text, I don't want the index, I just want the values of the selected items. How can this be done?

 

Use the SelectedIndices property instead of SelectedItems.

Answer 14

Andreas Johansson wrote:

Ashraf Gawdat wrote: So how to get the selected VALUES in a ListBox in windows form? I don't want the text, I don't want the index, I just want the values of the selected items. How can this be done?     Use the SelectedIndices property instead of SelectedItems.

Sorry but it seems you didn't get what I mean. I want the VALUES of the selected items, not the indices. If I am using a ComboBox I will get the selected value using ComboBox.SelectedValue property. That is what I want when using ListBox but in plural, something like SelectedValues. Unfortunately there is only a SelectedValue property in ListBox control, which gets the value of the first selected item only, but there is no SelectedValuesCollection or such property, which is really strange, because the main difference between ComboBox and ListBox is the multiselection capability!! How can I use the ListBox control if I can't collect the values of the items the user had selected?!

Answer 15

Sorry, I misunderstood your post.

How you get the value depends on how you actually store the value for an item. A common way I use for not databound listboxes is to make a ListBoxItem class/structure that has two values, the description and the value.

Override ToString() to return the description.

Add an instance of the class/structure to the items collection.

Use the SelectedItems method to get a collection of ListBoxItems and you can iterate through the returned collection and extract the value of each selected ListBoxItem class/struct.

Answer 16

Ok, if that works for not databound ListBoxes - I actually didn't try it because I use databinding - is there any other way to achieve this in databound ListBoxes?

Answer 17

When I bind a listbox to a datatable the items are of type DataRowView. This object will let you get to the DataRow that you can use to get any column.

Answer 18

It seems that i'm having the same problem.

 

How do I get the values from the databound listbox? Can you give a sample code using the datarow ? I'm using VB .net 2.0

 

I used the selectedindices and I've tested the collection of indices and indeed, it has the indices of those items I selected from the listbox. Problem now is , how do i get the corresponding value for each index? It seems that it's not as easy as listbox1.items.item(indexfromselectedindices)

 

Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 19

Oh yes I got it....

 

thanks to the datarow hint

 

code:

 

Dim chkList As ListBox.SelectedIndexCollection

Dim i As Integer = 0

chkList = lbTemplatesNew.SelectedIndices 'holds the index # of those that were selected

 

For i = 0 To chkList.Count - 1

Try

  Dim j As Integer

  Dim sdr As System.Data.DataRowView                     'To represent the bound items in list box

  j = chkList.Item(i)                                                         'the current index# from the collection of selected indices

 MsgBox("the current index# is : " & j)

 sdr = lbTemplatesNew.Items.Item(j)                            'right side of equation returns System.Data.Datarowview

 MsgBox("value : " & sdr.Item(0))

Catch ex As Exception

 

End Try

 

Next

 

Answer 20

Oye Thank You Dost,

 

Its working fine.

 

 

Anil Chauhan

 

Answer 21

Here's a similar way if you don't care for the index.

'fills out a text box with results in this example

Dim x As String = String.Empty

Try

For Each drv As System.Data.DataRowView In Me.ListBox1.SelectedItems

x &= drv.Item(0).ToString & vbCrLf     'column 0 value

'use: item(1), item(2), etc. for the other columns

Next

Catch ex As IndexOutOfRangeException

End Try

Me.TextBox1.Text = x

Answer 22

It works, thank you very much, I spent more time for this problem, thanks!!!

Answer 23

Man this realy works

there any way to know which are the columns in dataview? In addition to querying the database?

Answer 24

 

 

' This Code will give you selected item's index of listbox

If OptChrgAll.Checked = False Then

Dim x As Object

For Each x In LstChrg.SelectedItems

MsgBox(LstChrg.Items.IndexOf(x).ToString)

Next

End If

Answer 25

It should be like this

 

foreach (ListBoxItem listItem in listBox1.Items)
    {
       if (listItem.Selected == True)
       {
          //listItem.Value contains the value of the selected item
          //listItem.Text is the text displayed in the listbox of the selected item
       }
    }

Answer 26

Does this only work in v3.5 and above in Windows apps?  I can't get this to work on a web page.  I have a v3.5 ASP.NET page and I have had to make reference to PresentationCore, PresentationFramework and WindowsBase and I am still getting strange errors....

Error Message => The event 'System.Windows.Controls.ListBoxItem.Selected' can only appear on the left hand side of += or -=

 

Answer 27

Thanks very much. I've been looking for this for hours now. Glad I found your post and this solution works really well for be because my ListBox derive its' data from a dataset.

 

thanks again!

Answer 28

thanks man...this is really good n correct

Answer 29

Thanks, BeefyDog. Your solution worked perfectly. Here is BeefyDog's solution rewritten in C#: 

 

 

    string retval = "";

            try

            {

                foreach (DataRowView drv in lbx.SelectedItems)

                {

                    retval += drv.Row[2].ToString().Replace(" ", "").ToUpper() + ","; // index in '[]' will vary

                }

            }

            catch (IndexOutOfRangeException ex)

            {

                MessageBox.Show("Error occured: " + ex.Message);

            }

 

 

Answer 30

Here's an alternative

foreach (int index in ListBox.GetSelectedIndices())
{
     String itemValue = ListBox.Items[index].Value;
     //Process(itemValue);
}

Answer 31

I used VS 2010,asp.net,This solution works for me!
Thanks so much,K.wsanstos15.

Answer 32

Thanks a loott.This code works perfectlty:)

---

Rahul

Answer 33

I spent hours and hours trying to find this(not wording google correctly, I blame not having enough coffee) and works perfect.

Thanks for your help,

William.

---

William