Multiple fields for DataTextField on DropDown lists

 I'm sure this is very simple, but I can't seem to figure it out... is there any way of showing the concatenation of more than one field in a dropdown as the DataTextField? For example, I want a select box which lists currently stored documents in my database, but want to show it in the format:

Title (year)

at the very least (possibly more fields and even different ones if some are null for example).

The only way I can think of doing this is to either alter the SP or create a custom one which returns the fields concatenated into a single field, then choosing this field as the DataTextField value... is there a way of doing this in the code rather than the SP?

Thanks. 

Try creating a new property in your entity which has a get accessor that does teh concatentaion for you i.e

public string TitleAndYear
{
    get { return string.Format( "{0} ({1})", this.Title, this.Year); }
}

hth

swin 

I've added a new properly set [BindableAttribute(true)] but I still can't access this properly in code.  Whats weird is that another one I made for a different entity works just fine.

wow my bad. I was looking for the property in <Entity>Columns class lol 

Thanks for that Swin, hadn't really thought about putting this type of thing there!

Works a treat.

 The support for that has just been added (rev. 696)

Bellow is an example: 

<data:EntityDropDownList runat="server" ID="dataFunctionCodeId" DataSourceID="FunctionCodeIdFunctionCodeDataSource"
            DataTextField="FunctionCode,Desc" DataValueField="FunctionCodeId" DataTextFieldFormatString="{0} - {1}"
            SelectedValue='<%# Bind("FunctionCodeId") %>' AppendNullItem="true" Required="true" NullItemText="< Please Choose ...>" ErrorText="Required" />
        <data:FunctionCodeDataSource ID="FunctionCodeIdFunctionCodeDataSource" runat="server" SelectMethod="GetAll"  />

Mike, it looks like changes made to EntityDropDownList in rev. 696 break existing controls. Badly. I updated the templates and regenerated my app this morning, as a result EVERY EntityEntityDropDownList in the application now shows a null item description ("Please select...") instead of correct selected value. Even worse: if the underlying data source contains no items, the exception is thrown:

capacity was less than the current size.
Parameter name: value

Line 326:                if (rdsCollection != null)
Line 327:                {
Line 328:                    Items.Capacity = rdsCollection.Count;
Line 329:                }
Line 330:                bool valid = ((dataTextField.Length >= 0) && (dataValueField.Length >= 0));

Please advise...

dvd,

Thanks for the report, the fix has been committed (rev. 697) 

Those enhancements needed more testing ... i've have made a rollback to the state without Multi-DataTextField support.

Right, I got to the same conclusion: after applying rev. 697 dropdowns still have wrong selected values...

can u plz tell me

how can we achive this from code behind at runtime insteed of design time.

Thanks. 

 Can you add more info about what you want to do exactly Jagmohan?