PROBLEM

Few days back, my client asked me to add hyperlinks to asp CheckBoxList list-item , so that the user can open a pdf / doc file on click of it and after reading it check the check-boxes based on their requirement. But the thing was that, the CheckBoxList is bind from code-behind, so we can not simply do something like this :-

<asp:CheckBoxList ID="cbl" runat="server">
 
        <asp:ListItem Value="0"><a href="http://www.asp.net">asp.net</a></asp:ListItem>
        <asp:ListItem Value="1"><a href="http://ui.asp.net">ui.asp.net</a></asp:ListItem>
 
</asp:CheckBoxList>

SOLUTION

So, what I did is :-

 ASPX
 
<asp:CheckBoxList ID="cbl" runat="server">
</asp:CheckBoxList>
 
 C#
 
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
dt = GetData();  // A methods which returns DataTable
 
if (dt.Rows.Count > 0)
{
 cbl.DataSource = dt;
 cbl.DataTextField = "DESCRIPTION";
 cbl.DataValueField = "PK_ID";
cbl.DataBind();
 
for (int i = 0; i < dt.Rows.Count; i++)
        {
      cbl.Items[i].Text = " <a href='" + dt.Rows[i]["URL"]
                                          + "' target='_blank' title='View Document'>"
                                          + cbl.Items[i].Text + "</a>";
}
}
 

Happy coding