What is the best way to code up a Month and Year drop down list for ASP.NET?

Extending @Jesse Brown's answer...

With a using System.Globalization directive, I have the following code:

for (int x = 0; x < 12; x++)
{
    cboMonth.Items.Add
    (
       (x+1).ToString("00") 
       + " " 
       + CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.MonthNames.GetValue(x)
     );
}

This produces a dropdown list that looks like:

01 January 02 February 03 March ... 12 December

A further refinement might be to make the displayed month the current month by adding:

cboMonth.Text = DateTime.Now.Month.ToString("00") 
   + " " 
   + CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.MonthNames.GetValue(DateTime.Now.Month);

After the for loop.


Below code is for load month dropdown as Select

    private void LoadMonth()
    {
        ddlmonth.Items.Add(new ListItem("Select", 0.ToString()));
        var months = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.MonthNames;
        for (int i = 0; i < months.Length-1; i++)
        {
            ddlmonth.Items.Add(new ListItem(months[i], (i+1).ToString()));
        }
    }

Here is my solution, which is very similar to @jesse-brown's solution (the accepted answer)

VB.NET:

In a global functions class:

Public Shared Function GetMonthList() As Generic.Dictionary(Of String, String)
    Dim months As New Generic.Dictionary(Of String, String)()
    For m As Int32 = 1 To 12
        months.Add(String.Format("{0:0#}", m), CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.GetMonthName(m))
    Next

    Return months
End Function

On the ASPX page:

Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
    ddMonth.DataSource = GlobalFunctions.GetMonthList()
    ddMonth.DataValueField = "Key"
    ddMonth.DataTextField = "Value"
    ddMonth.DataBind()

End Sub

This implementation is in VB.NET because that happens to be what this webapp is using (legacy), however thank you very much for the examples in C# (my preferred language), I'm posting the VB.NET here to help the VB.NET community as well.


You could use this to get a list of all the Month names and loop through it.

CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.MonthNames

You can use it like this...using the index of the Month as the value for your dropdown

var months = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.MonthNames;
for (int i = 0; i < months.Length; i++)
{
     ddl.Items.Add(new ListItem(months[i], i.ToString()));
}