Replace use of ComboBox with user controls

Question

In currently developing a project where I'm going to use a lot of combobox, in order to avoid repeating a lot of code I'm planning on building a user control containing a ComboBox that retrieve the data I need from my tables.

What is the best approach for this since I'm going to use a lot of different ComboBox with different tables ? Differents user controls for differents table or just 1 user control where I pass the table I need ?

Example:

Combo1
 Spring/Summer 2015/2016 
 Spring/Summer 2016/2017 
 Fall/Winter 2015/2016 
 Fall/Winter 2016/2017 
Combo2
 Collection 1 
 Collection 2 
 Collection 3 
 Collection 4 
 Collection 5 

These 2 combo will be repeated a lot of times in the project. My question is : should I create 2 user control (combo1UserControl,combo2UserControl) or just some comboUserControl with some parameteres like the name of the tables ?

• Laurent S.: The point of your question is reusing code... if you do 1 UC by table, it looks the same as using the combobox self. But maybe you should explain a bit what your goal is with an example.

Answer 1

Assuming you are using .NET, mentioning C#, I would look into data binding features first. Most UI toolkit Microsoft has made offer some form of data binding either to objects, object lists or ADO.NET datasets. Mixing your data retrieval with your UI controls is never a good idea, I would try and keep this external to your user interface.