ASP/C#.NET Question: Populate Webform Controls Dynamically

[MartinS]

As relatively new to C#/ASP.Net, I'm struggling with the concept of this task, so as most of the forums are US based, want to get moving with this before lunchtime, so I'm passing it over to the YD massive to see if there is anyone who can get the ball rolling for me.
I have a webform which contains several listbox controls (amongst others), and need to be able to store the relevant info from each one, i.e. a list of the listbox's text items, their corresponding values and the text item selected, so that at any time, I can re-populate the listbox controls with the relevant data. Currently, each time, the page is accessed, it has to read from a SQL database to populate the controls, but to try and speed up the process I am attempting to store all of the possible info on the page so that it does not need to access the SQL database each time. I'm guessing it will be best to store the items listed in session based on the control name (I could be wrong!), so that they can be recalled and applied to the correct control, but am not sure how best to retain the data, and then how to return all the info back to the control. My initial plan was to use a utilites class to store all the common code, but now think it may need to be done within the code module of the webform.
Can anyone get me started on the best way to do this?
Regards, and thanks in advance...
Martin

[RonProwse]

If the data you need to load in to the controls is only relevant to the person accessing the page then store the data in the Session otherwise if the data is the same across the web application then store it at the application level this way the you only need to load data once where as you would load data each time the user connect to the application.

Ron

[MartinS]

Hi Ron
I understand what you are saying, but my question was really aimed at how to store all the info for a control in one place so it can be recalled at any time. The info is relevant to the user, as more than one person can be using the system at any one time and each user sees their own specific data/views.
Is writing the info to an XML file worth considering? It looks like reading from XML into a listbox control is relatively straight-forward, but can an XML file be created, written to and then saved easily? I really wanted to design a method that would populate any listbox control to save me replicating code for each relevant listbox. I guess the control's name, it's values and text items could be parameters, but what data type is a listbox's list?
Any other ideas/code examples gratefully received
Regards
Martin

[RonProwse]

if the datan returned as a datatable (.net object) then just use
Session.add("controldata", dtreturneddata);
to get at the data
listcontrol.datasource = (DataTable)Session["controldata"];
listcontrol.databind();

[MartinS]

Ron
Sorry, looks OK except I'm not sure that I have a data table!
How do I convert the Items list of the ListBox to a datatable (so it contains both the Name and Value elements of each list item)?
Thanks
Martin

[RonProwse]

if your using Visual Studio do you have the dynamic help window open (if the msdn installed) then by typing :-

Listbox l = new listbox(); and clicking on the word listbox will bring up the help window for it that should guide you.

Ron