How To Fill Dropdownlist With XML in ASP.NET

This article will see how we can populate a DropDownList control with an XML file as a source. Our XML file looks something like below, which simply contains the name of the clients.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<names>
 <name>
   <client>hank</client>
 </name>
 <name>
   <client>corry</client>
 </name>
 <name>
   <client>david</client>
 </name>
 <name>
   <client>james</client>
 </name>
</names>

Filling a DropDownList with XML file: Now, we want to fill the DropDownList with the contents contained in the XML file. Don’t forget to include the namespace System.XML.

private void FillDropDownList()
    {
        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.Load(Server.MapPath("Menu.xml"));
        XmlNodeList nodeList = doc.SelectNodes("names/name");
        foreach (XmlNode node in nodeList)
            DropdownList1.Items.Add(new ListItem(node.SelectSingleNode("client").InnerText));
    }

All we are doing is making an object of the XmlDocument class. Then, we read the XML file, dig down the nodes, and select the nodes we want. And finally, add those node’s inner text to the DropDownList items.