Help with dropdown list

Dorothy

In my DB I have a table dept table (see below) and in my application I have a form where a user has to add his info and chose a dept from which he works for. It works fine with the Id’s. Problem is that in my employee table I have “DeptID” as a foreign key, and it doesn’t make sense for a user to click the dropdown and see 1,2,3 etc…rather I want a user to see “IT, Accounting etc..” (of which I can populate the dropdown by selecting the DeptName), problem comes when I have to insert the info into the employee table. For example when the user selected IT from the dropdown I must insert 1 in my employee table bcoz IT =1

DeptID	DeptName
1	IT
2	Accounting

EmpID	DeptID	Name	Surname
001	2	Dorothy	Ntombela
002	1	Dorothy	Maseko

Part of the code looks like this:

string cat = "Select DeptId from Department Where DeptName = '" + cboDept.Text + "' ";

int hello = Convert.ToInt32(cat);

command.CommandText = "Insert into Employee(EmpId, DeptId, Name, Surname) Values ('" + num + "', '" + hello + "' , '" + txtname.text + "', '" + txtSurname.text + "') " ;
Error : "input string was not in a correct format"

Someone please help

3 Replies

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Dorothy20y ago
Oh! thanks. both worked but the second solution workes better.
savan gandhi20y ago
Dont add +1 assuming the order of the dept is proper because sometimes autoincremented IDs can be interleaved like IT - 1, Accounts - 3. This can happen due to deletion of Dept. with ID - 2. Instead, use DisplayMember & ValueMember properties of combobox. cmbBox.DisplayMember = "DeptName" cmbBox.ValueMember = "DeptID" Then ur query will be: command.CommandText = "Insert into Employee(EmpId, DeptId, Name, Surname) Values (num , cmbBox.SelectedValue , '" + txtname.text + "', '" + txtSurname.text + "') " ; This should work.
Scott Lysle20y ago
Dorothy:

Why don't you just use the selectd index value from the drop down list and add 1 to it? Assuming the values are in the correct order, this will directly give you the correct value without trying to figure it out from the string.

e.g.,

Private Sub ComboBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ComboBox1.SelectedIndexChanged

MessageBox.Show(ComboBox1.SelectedIndex + 1, "Selection Number")

End Sub