#978 – Discovering Whether an Item in a ListBox Is Selected

The ListBoxItem object, representing a single item in a ListBox, contains an IsSelected property that you can read in order to determine whether the item is selected.

If you use data binding to populate the list, the objects in the ListBox’s Items property will not be ListBoxItem instances, but will have a type matching the bound object.

You can use the ContainerFromItem helper method to get the corresponding ListBoxItem so that you can then query it to determine if the object is selected.

        private void btnRead_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            StringBuilder sbInfo = new StringBuilder();

            // Each item is an Actor
            foreach (Actor a in lbActors.Items)
            {
                // Get item's ListBoxItem
                ListBoxItem lbi =
                  (ListBoxItem)lbActors.ItemContainerGenerator.ContainerFromItem(a);

                if (lbi.IsSelected)
                    sbInfo.Append("YES ");
                else
                    sbInfo.Append("no ");
            }

            MessageBox.Show(sbInfo.ToString());
        }