Get ValueMember of Selected item in ListBox

Question

I\'ve seen a couple of posts asking a similar question but I have not been able to duplicate the answers in my code successfully. The following code adds items and their value m

Answer 1

ValueMember is supposed to indicate the property name of an object added to the Items collection: the property to use as the actual value for the items in the ListControl.

You are not adding objects to the control, so Key from the hashtable is meaningless as the ValueMember. Your post references a file variable in passing, so I will assume this revolves around showing the filename while wanting to get the full pathname when selected/clicked. WebForms/Winforms/WPF was not indicated, I am assuming WinForms:

Public Class myFile
   Public Property FileName As String
   Public Property FullPath  As String

   Public Property FileSize As Int64      ' just so there is something else

   Public Sub New(f as String, p as String, s as Int64)
       FileName = f
       FullPath = b
       FileSize = s
   End Sub

End Class

Lets say we want to add some of these to a ListBox, for each item added we want FileName to display as the text, but want to get them back by FullPath:

Dim f As myFile
' assume these come from a fileinfo

For Each fi as FileInfo in DirectoryInfo.GetFiles(searchFor)
    f = New myFile
    f.FileName = fi.Name
    f.FullPath = fi.FullPath
    f.FileSize = fi.Length

    ' myFile accepts all the prop values in the constructor
    ' so creating a new one could also be written as:
    ' f = New myFile(fi.Name, fi.FullPath, fi.Length)

    myListBox.Items.Add(f)
Next n

If the myFile objects were stored to a List(of myFile) rather than adding them to the control, we can bind the List as the DataSource and not have to iterate or copy:

mylistBox.DataSource = myFileList

Either way, Display- and ValueMember refer to the property names we wish to use:

myListBox.DisplayMember = "FileName"    ' indicate property name of obj to SHOW
myListBox.ValueMember = "FullPath"      ' prop name of object to return

When you select a listbox item, myListBox.SelectedValue would refer to the FullPath of the myFile object clicked on. The SelectedIndex would still refer to the index of the item in the list.

tl;dr

ValueMember and DisplayMember refers to the Property Names of Objects represented in the list.

Note: