Just incase anyone else is stuck with something similar, I managed to populate the dropdown from an XML file as follows:
//create function to read XML
function loadXMLDoc(dname)
{
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{
xhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{
xhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xhttp.open("GET",dname,false);
xhttp.send();
return xhttp.responseXML;
}
// load xml file
xmlDoc=loadXMLDoc('xmlsource.asp' + gameid);
teamnames =[];
var teams = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("hometeams");
for (var i = 0; i < teams.length; i++) {
var hname = teams[i].getAttribute("name");
teamsnames.push(hname);
}
Then later on in column definitions:
var eventColumnDefs = [
{key:"teamname", sortable:true, editor:"dropdown", editorOptions:{dropdownOptions:teamnames}}
];
I hope this helps someone. Thank you Satyam for your help on this and my other question. =]