DisplayMember / ValueMember Question

[James]

HERE'S THE SHORT VERSION OF MY QUESTION:
When using the DisplayMemeber property of a combobox, is it possible
to concatenate multiple fields from a dataview for use as the value to
display, or do you have to handle the concatenation in the dataset?

HERE'S THE IN-DEPTH DESC OF WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO:
I'm writing a Smart Device solution that reads data from an XML
datasource into a dataset, then I break-out the tables into dataviews
for to bind to my form's controls.

One of the tables in my dataset is a table that contains information
about a car, such as Make, Model, Year, etc. The Car table has a
PrimaryKey called car_id.

I have a combo box that let's the user select a car and see detailed
information about the car in a datagrid. The combobox is fed from a
dataview called dvCars and the datagrid is bound to a dataview called
dvCarDetails. I use the DisplayMember and ValueMember properties of
the combobox to store the Make of the vehicle and then the vehicle ID
respectively. When the combo's index changes, the filter for the
datagrid's dataview is changed to match the selected vehicle using the
car_id stored in the ValueMember of the combo.

Given that Year, Make nor Model alone is really descriptive enough for
a user to choose from the selection of cars, is it possible
concatenate all three (Year, Make & Model) so the concatenated value
is used as the DisplayMember to help the user choose more accurately?
I still need to store car_id in ValueMember though, to filter my Car
Details dataview.

For reference, here's my code:

Private Sub PopulateCmbVehicles()
Dim VehicleCount, x As Integer
Dim strVehicleDesc As String

Me.dvCars.RowFilter = "active = 'Y'"

Me.cmbVehicles.DataSource = Me.dvCars
cmbVehicles.ValueMember = "car_id"
cmbVehicles.DisplayMember = "make"
End Sub


Private Sub PopulateDG1()
Dim strFilter As String
Dim row As DataRowView = CType(cmbVehicles.Items
_(cmbVehicles.SelectedIndex), DataRowView)

strFilter = "car_id = '" & row("car_id") & "'"
Me.dvCarDetails.RowFilter = strFilter
Me.DG1.DataSource = dvCarDetails

End Sub

Thanks much!
Jamie

 

[Peter Foot [MVP]]

You'll need to have the values already concatenated to do this as the
ComboBox can only be bound to a single value and single display column. You
can create an Expression column in your dataset to combine the values of
several other fields.

Peter