Differences in WinForms ListBox and ASP.NET ListBox

In regards to my sample code "Adjusting to life without ItemData", I've had a few emails asking if this will work in ASP.NET as well. Unfortunately, it won't. The ASP.NET ListBox.Items collection is a ListItemCollection object. This collection's Add method only accepts ListItem objects which contain a simple Text/Value pair. This is all because of the way this gets translated down to HTML using the standard <OPTION> tag.

One option is if you're collection has a unique string key, use that as the "Value" property of the ListItem and then set the ListItem.Text to whatever you want displayed in the listbox. On PostBack, you can get the value of the currently selected ListItem and use that to index back into your collection.