Get Selected/Highlighted Text from WPF ComboBox

 Blog author: Niladri.Biswas | Posted on: 4/30/2012 | Category: WPF Blogs | Views: 1317 | Status: [Member] | Points: 75 | Alert Moderator   Tweet  Download source file

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Hi, in a recent requirement of mine, I had to choose only the text that has been highlighted/selected in a WPF combo box which is editable.

e.g.

Let us say we have a WPF combobox and a button as given below

<ComboBox  Name="comboBox1" IsEditable="True" />
<Button Content="Get Selected Text" Name="button1" Click="button1_Click" />

Now, we have written some text in the combobox at runtime say

DLF/ILP 2012 is rocking at it's best.

After that by using mouse/keyboard, say we have highlighted "rocking".

Now when we click the button the result will be "rocking".

For doing so, I have written the below code

private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
	string result = string.Empty;
	var editableTextBox = comboBox1.Template.FindName("PART_EditableTextBox", comboBox1) as TextBox;
	if (editableTextBox != null)
	{
		result = editableTextBox.SelectedText;
	}

	MessageBox.Show(string.Format("Selected Text is {0}",result));

}

Code Explanation

The ComboBox doesn't track the text selection itself, so if we want to get the selected text we will need to find the TextBox in the template for the ComboBox and read the selection information from there.The ComboBox class has a TemplatePartAttribute:[TemplatePartAttribute(Name = "PART_EditableTextBox", Type = typeof(TextBox))]. This specifies the control template expects a part with that name and that type.

Hope this will be helpful.