C# – How to refresh dropdownlist without reloading the page

asp.netc

I have two dropdownlists in my page:

<asp:DropDownList AutoPostBack="True" OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddlMain_SelectedIndexChanged" ClientIDMode="Static" ID="ddlMain" name="searchPhys" style="width: 365px;" class="default" runat="server" AppendDataBoundItems="true">
    <asp:ListItem Text="BY PHYSICIAN" Value="0" Selected="True" />
    <asp:ListItem Text="BY LOCATION" Value="1" />
    <asp:ListItem Text="BY SPECIALTY" Value="2" />
</asp:DropDownList>

<br /><br />

<asp:DropDownList ClientIDMode="Static" ID="ddlDrillDown" name="searchPhys" style="width: 365px;" class="default" runat="server" AppendDataBoundItems="true">
</asp:DropDownList>

My code-behind to handle the dropdownlist change is:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Data;

public partial class physicians : System.Web.UI.Page
{

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {

    if (!Page.IsPostBack) {
        PopulatePhysician();
    }
    //PopulateSpecialty();
    //PopulateLocation();

    }

    public void PopulatePhysician() {
        SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("getPhysicians", new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConnString"]));
        //cmd.CommandType = Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure
        cmd.Connection.Open();

        SqlDataReader ddlValues = default(SqlDataReader);
        ddlValues = cmd.ExecuteReader();

        //if (!IsPostBack) {
            ddlDrillDown.Items.Clear();
            ddlDrillDown.DataSource = ddlValues;
            ddlDrillDown.DataValueField = "content_id";
            ddlDrillDown.DataTextField = "content_title";
            ddlDrillDown.DataBind();
            //set the default value for the drop down
            ListItem Item = new ListItem();
            Item.Text = "Select a Physician's Name";
            Item.Value = "0";
            //Item.Selected = True
            ddlDrillDown.Items.Insert(0, Item);
        //}
    cmd.Connection.Close();
    cmd.Connection.Dispose();
    }

    public void PopulateSpecialty() {
        SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("getSpecialties", new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConnString"]));
        cmd.Connection.Open();

        SqlDataReader ddlValues = default(SqlDataReader);
        ddlValues = cmd.ExecuteReader();

        //if (!IsPostBack) {
            ddlDrillDown.Items.Clear();
            ddlDrillDown.DataSource = ddlValues;
            ddlDrillDown.DataValueField = "content_id";
            ddlDrillDown.DataTextField = "content_title";
            ddlDrillDown.DataBind();
            //set the default value for the drop down
            ListItem Item = new ListItem();
            Item.Text = "Select a Specialty";
            Item.Value = "0";
            ddlDrillDown.Items.Insert(0, Item);
        //}
        cmd.Connection.Close();
        cmd.Connection.Dispose();
    }

    public void PopulateLocation() {
        SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("getLocations", new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConnString"]));
        cmd.Connection.Open();

        SqlDataReader ddlValues = default(SqlDataReader);
        ddlValues = cmd.ExecuteReader();

        //if (!IsPostBack) {
            ddlDrillDown.Items.Clear();
            ddlDrillDown.DataSource = ddlValues;
            ddlDrillDown.DataValueField = "content_id";
            ddlDrillDown.DataTextField = "content_title";
            ddlDrillDown.DataBind();

            //set the default value for the drop down
            ListItem Item = new ListItem();
            Item.Text = "Select a Location";
            Item.Value = "0";
            ddlDrillDown.Items.Insert(0, Item);
        //}
        cmd.Connection.Close();
        cmd.Connection.Dispose();
    }

    public void ddlMain_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
        switch(ddlMain.SelectedIndex) {
            case 0:
                PopulatePhysician();
                break;
            case 1:
                PopulateLocation();
                break;
            case 2:
                PopulateSpecialty();
                break;
        }
    }
}

The feature that I am trying to add to the above is, when the user selects an option from the ddlMain dropdownlist to refresh the ddlDrillDown dropdownlist based on the option without reloading the page.

How can I achieve it?

UPDATE:

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager" 
                               runat="server" />
            <asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" 
                             UpdateMode="Conditional"
                             runat="server">
                <ContentTemplate>
                    <asp:DropDownList AutoPostBack="True" OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddlMain_SelectedIndexChanged" ClientIDMode="Static" ID="ddlMain" style="width: 365px;" class="default" runat="server" AppendDataBoundItems="true">
                        <asp:ListItem Text="BY PHYSICIAN" Value="0" Selected="True" />
                        <asp:ListItem Text="BY LOCATION" Value="1" />
                        <asp:ListItem Text="BY SPECIALTY" Value="2" />
                    </asp:DropDownList>
                    <br /><br />
                    <asp:DropDownList ClientIDMode="Static" ID="ddlDrillDown" style="width: 365px;" class="default" runat="server" AppendDataBoundItems="true">
                    </asp:DropDownList>
                    </ContentTemplate>
            </asp:UpdatePanel>

Best Answer

Use AJAX. Place both dropdown controls in UpdatePanel and just after the opening Form tag in the page add a ScriptManager (if not already there)

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C# – How to get the index of the current iteration of a foreach loop

Ian Mercer posted a similar solution as this on Phil Haack's blog:

foreach (var item in Model.Select((value, i) => new { i, value }))
{
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    var index = item.i;
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This gets you the item (item.value) and its index (item.i) by using this overload of LINQ's Select:

the second parameter of the function [inside Select] represents the index of the source element.

The new { i, value } is creating a new anonymous object.

Heap allocations can be avoided by using ValueTuple if you're using C# 7.0 or later:

foreach (var item in Model.Select((value, i) => ( value, i )))
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You can also eliminate the item. by using automatic destructuring:

<ol>
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C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

You can use a library called ExcelLibrary. It's a free, open source library posted on Google Code:

ExcelLibrary

This looks to be a port of the PHP ExcelWriter that you mentioned above. It will not write to the new .xlsx format yet, but they are working on adding that functionality in.

It's very simple, small and easy to use. Plus it has a DataSetHelper that lets you use DataSets and DataTables to easily work with Excel data.

ExcelLibrary seems to still only work for the older Excel format (.xls files), but may be adding support in the future for newer 2007/2010 formats.

You can also use EPPlus, which works only for Excel 2007/2010 format files (.xlsx files). There's also NPOI which works with both.

There are a few known bugs with each library as noted in the comments. In all, EPPlus seems to be the best choice as time goes on. It seems to be more actively updated and documented as well.

Also, as noted by @АртёмЦарионов below, EPPlus has support for Pivot Tables and ExcelLibrary may have some support (Pivot table issue in ExcelLibrary)

Here are a couple links for quick reference:
ExcelLibrary - GNU Lesser GPL
EPPlus - GNU (LGPL) - No longer maintained
EPPlus 5 - Polyform Noncommercial - Starting May 2020
NPOI - Apache License

Here some example code for ExcelLibrary:

Here is an example taking data from a database and creating a workbook from it. Note that the ExcelLibrary code is the single line at the bottom:

//Create the data set and table
DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
DataTable dt = new DataTable("New_DataTable");

//Set the locale for each
ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
dt.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

//Open a DB connection (in this example with OleDB)
OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(dbConnectionString);
con.Open();

//Create a query and fill the data table with the data from the DB
string sql = "SELECT Whatever FROM MyDBTable;";
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
OleDbDataAdapter adptr = new OleDbDataAdapter();

adptr.SelectCommand = cmd;
adptr.Fill(dt);
con.Close();

//Add the table to the data set
ds.Tables.Add(dt);

//Here's the easy part. Create the Excel worksheet from the data set
ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);

Creating the Excel file is as easy as that. You can also manually create Excel files, but the above functionality is what really impressed me.

Best Answer

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C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

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