This is old but since I used the accepted answer recently I wanted to share my experience with it. While it does provide the correct markup, it caused problems for me, specifically whenever I tried to submit a form with any dropdownlist I would get the dreaded "Invalid postback or callback argument" error. After googling like a maniac, I came across [this article][1] which then links to [this blog post][2]. The code I ended up using was this:
public class DropDownListAdapter : System.Web.UI.WebControls.Adapters.WebControlAdapter {
protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter writer) {
var dropDownList = (DropDownList)Control;
var items = dropDownList.Items;
var groups = (from p in items.OfType<ListItem>()
group p by p.Attributes["Group"] into g
select new { Label = g.Key, Items = g.ToList() });
foreach (var group in groups)
{
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(group.Label))
{
writer.WriteBeginTag("optgroup");
writer.WriteAttribute("label", group.Label);
writer.Write(">");
}
var count = group.Items.Count();
if (count > 0)
{
var flag = false;
for (var i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
var item = group.Items[i];
writer.WriteBeginTag("option");
if (item.Selected)
{
if (flag)
{
throw new HttpException("Multiple selected items not allowed");
}
flag = true;
writer.WriteAttribute("selected", "selected");
}
if (!item.Enabled)
{
writer.WriteAttribute("disabled", "true");
}
writer.WriteAttribute("value", item.Value, true);
if (Page != null)
{
Page.ClientScript.RegisterForEventValidation(dropDownList.UniqueID, item.Value);
}
writer.Write('>');
HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(item.Text, writer);
writer.WriteEndTag("option");
writer.WriteLine();
}
}
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(group.Label))
{
writer.WriteEndTag("optgroup");
}
}
}
}
The listitems used here are created in the design page rather than the code-behind page like so:
<asp:ListItem Value="apple" Text="Apple" Group="Fruit"></asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem Value="banana" Text="Banana" Group="Fruit"></asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem Value="asparagus" Text="Asparagus" Group="Vegetable"></asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem Value="eggs" Text="Eggs" Group="Dairy"></asp:ListItem>
This produced the same markup as the accepted answer here but this didn't give me the postback error. I hope this saves someone some grief.
[1]:
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[2]:
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