C#: How to bind an Enum to a ListBox/DropDownList/ Checkboxlist control in ASP.NET?

There have been requirements where we need to bind ListControl from enum (with enum Description as Text and enum value as Value).

For example I have an enum of Countries as follows:

public enum TestCountries {     [Description("India")] India = 1     ,     [Description("United State Of America")] UnitedStateOfAmerica = 2     ,     [Description("United Kingdom")] UnitedKingdom = 3 }

And I want to bind this enum’s description and value to any list control.

Here I am writing a static method “LoadListForListControls<T>”, which will take Enum as T, and then return list of ListItem.

// We need to use following namespaces for this method: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Linq; using System.Reflection; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; public static List<ListItem> LoadListForListControls<T>() {     var type = typeof(T);     var list = new List<ListItem>();     foreach (var value in Enum.GetValues(type))     {         var enumValue = (Int32)value;         var fi = value.GetType().GetField(value.ToString());         var customAttributes =                     fi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);         DescriptionAttribute attribute = null;         if (customAttributes.Length > 0)                     attribute = (DescriptionAttribute)customAttributes[0];         var item = new ListItem                        {                            Text = attribute != null                                       ? attribute.Description                                       : Enum.GetName(type, enumValue),                            Value = (Convert.ToInt32(enumValue)).ToString()                        };         list.Add(item);     }     return list; }

Usage:

So our method is ready, To use it let’s take a dropdown list:

<asp:DropDownList runat="server" ID="ddlCountries" />

Now in code behind C# let’s create a method which takes two parameters first as ListControl, and second list of ListItems and this method will then bind the provided list control.(Note: I have made this generic function to work with all list controls, you can modify as per your convenience).

private static void BindListControl(ListControl ctrl, List<ListItem> list) {     ctrl.DataSource = list;     ctrl.DataTextField = "Text";     ctrl.DataValueField = "Value";     ctrl.DataBind(); }

Just pass the name of the list control(in this case "ddlCountries") as first parameter and in second parameter call "LoadListForListControls” method to get list as:

BindListControl(ddlCountries, LoadListForListControls<TestCountries>());

Same way you can bind Listbox/Checkboxlist/Radiobuttonlist by same BindListControl” method.

Hope it helps!!!