What is the best way to do this....?

SQL Database 2005 | ASP.NET

Purpose of my project:

A webform that a user completes that emails people in a database based on which checkboxes(categories) they select.

MY IDEA.....

Webform:

A. Usual contact stuff

B. Description Box which will become the email body

C. CheckboxList which will contain about 40 checkboxes. This list is dynamically generated by binding to a categories table in the database. The contact records in the database are aleady relationally associated to the categories.

D. Submit Button

MY Problem...

How would I iterate through the list and then compare the checkboxes to the database in order to generate the emails to be sent out? If I did this with single check boxes, I could just do a bunch of if statements like if (CheckBox1.Checked) then call a stored procedure that grabs every email address that is associated with checkbox1. I don't know how to do this with a list.

How would some of you pros tackle this ?

Wouldn't it just be something like..

foreach (ListItem itemin CheckBoxList1.Items)
{
if (item.Selected)
{
// Send email
}
}

That will get me a list of what is selected. but then how do I compare the list against the database. Here is what I was using before with just single checkboxes:

protected void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
if (CheckBox1.Checked)
{
PassID("1");
}

if (CheckBox2.Checked)
{
PassID("2");
}

etc...etc..etc..

PassID method calls a stored proceedure that passes in the value of the checkbox and returns all the records associated with it.

IE.

PassID get all the emails that are assocaited with checkbox 1 and put them in a collection

I'm not sure how to get this to work with a checkboxlist, I'm not even sure you can do it this way.

Why wouldn't this work (assuming PassID returns a collection of Email objects)?

List<Email> emailCollection =new List<Email>();
foreach (ListItem itemin CheckBoxList1.Items)
{
foreach (Email emailin PassID(item.Value))
emailCollection.Add(email);
}

Hmm...

I didn't even think of that. I'm going to monkey around with that though. I think that is exactly the direction I need to go.

Thanks for the help Justin!!

JustinHolton:

Why wouldn't this work (assuming PassID returns a collection of Email objects)?

List<Email> emailCollection =new List<Email>();
foreach (ListItem itemin CheckBoxList1.Items)
{
foreach (Email emailin PassID(item.Value))
emailCollection.Add(email);
}

List<Email> emailCollection =new List<Email>();

How are you getting Email as a type? What does that derive from? 

It would be a custom type in your BLL, i.e. a class you wrote. It's just an example I used for clarity. Unless you're doing anything special with email addresses feel free to use a string instead.

Thanks again bro. I'm still learning c# and the framework I looked all over for information on an email data type. LOL