Getting the value from the dropdownbox Event Reciever sharepoint 2010

Question

I have an event reciever for item adding.

I'm using:

dropdwnvalue = web.Lists[properties.ListId].Fields["Names"].InternalName;

string selectedValue = properties.AfterProperties[dropdwnvalue].ToString();

In selectedValue I'm able to get the index of the selected dropdownbox. Is there any way to get the value "Bob" instead of the index?

Answer 1

Check out this my blog post, it describes your situation.
Shortly, in before-receivers you always get a lookup id only (for lookup fields). If you want to get other item field values from lookup list, you must get item by this id and then get all required values.

Answer 2

In general you can get it by using SPFieldLookupValue:

SPFieldLookupValue YourLookup = new (SPFieldLookupValue(Properties.AfterProperties.LisItem["Your lookup"] as string);

In your case the code would become:

dropdwnvalue = web.Lists[properties.ListId].Fields["Names"].InternalName;
String lookupFieldStringValue = Convert.ToString(properties.AfterProperties[dropdwnvalue]);
SPFieldLookupValue lookupFieldValue = new SPFieldLookupValue(lookupFieldStringValue);

Update

int lookedUpItemID = lookupFieldValue.LookupId;

If you want to use both LookupId and LookupValue then you can use SPFieldLookupValue constructor with two parameters

Something like this:

SPFieldLookupValue(1,"Test");