GridView

About a year ago, I started to evaluate ASP.Net MVC, but decided to put it aside because it was still in heavy-duty development. With the official release a couple of weeks ago, I decided to check it out once again. MVC has a lot of things to offer, but there are a few critical things that we couldn’t overlook. We have a few web applications that all have quite a lot invested in server controls (both third-party and developed in-house). In ASP.Net WebForms, for something as simple as a GridView with...

A couple of weeks back I attended a session on Unobtrusive JavaScript (UJS) and jQuery by John Teague. This was probably the biggest thing I took from the Houston TechFest. Recently, I found the opportunity to put my new knowledge to good use. I haven't reach the unobtrusive part of John's presentation, but jQuery is my first step. Documentation I found the jQuery API documentation to be invaluable. At first, as a reference, it was a little difficult to find what I need. For example the "val()" function....

Today I was working on a WebForm that includes a GridView which presents text boxes for various columns. I put these in the ItemTemplate so all of the rows could be edited at any time. The next requirement was to update certain read only columns (e.g. Total Amount) based on the changes of the others. Originally, I had the entire GridView in an UpdatePanel, but that quickly proved to be a problem for two reasons. First, the updates were fairly slow. Second, the active control would lose focus after...

Introduction Last time we spent a lot of time on the SelectionController. To conclude the series, we will hook the selection behavior into our CustomGridView. Recap: Custom GridView Guidelines - Preface Custom GridView Guidelines - Part 1 - Preparing the Canvas Custom GridView Guidelines - Part 2 - Selection Interface Custom GridView Guidelines - Part 3 - SelectionController Implementing the IRowSelectionView There are quite a few events on the view that the CustomGridView needs to implement. In...

Introduction This part in the series will focus on the SelectionController. Here is where most of the work is done. We've already covered the view interface, IRowSelectionView. Now we will see how the controller interacts with the view. Recap: Custom GridView Guidelines - Preface Custom GridView Guidelines - Part 1 - Preparing the Canvas Custom GridView Guidelines - Part 2 - Selection Interface Capturing Shift and Ctrl Key Status We want to emulate multi-selection as in Windows Explorer. The Shift...

Introduction I briefly described the design approach in Part 1. This part in the series will explore the ways in which the custom GridView communicates to the controller. I extend my apologies for the lack of code. I am limited in what I can provide. I hope that these guidelines will help point you in the right direction. Classes / Interfaces CustomGridView - The GridView we are customizing SelectionController - Responsible for the row selection behavior IRowSelectionView - How CustomGridView and...

Background Way back in March I posted about a custom GridView I was working on. Then in June, I said that I would be posting some guidelines "in the coming weeks". Needless to say, I've been busy with other things. I am hoping to provide some basic guidelines on how to customize a ASP.Net GridView. I am no expert. The experts build components for retail use. Also, I've taken a server-side approach to the problem which is perhaps a little outdated with AJAX technology available. In my case, I use...

I've had a few people ask me about my custom GridView and whether I can help them with theirs. Though, I cannot share my code directly, I can provide some guidelines. In the coming weeks I plan to post segments stepping through customizing a GridView. My customizations are by no means perfect, and I have had to tweak things as I encounter issues. I look forward to sharing my experiences. I will probably post a multi-part article that walks through customizing a GridView. Again, I will not be posting...

I've have been pretty quiet lately. Actually, I've been quite busy and it turns out that there isn't much new to share. However, this is one thing that comes to mind. A recurring pattern in my UI is selection criteria that can applied to a GridView. It turns out that frequently the same criteria applies to various screens. I use LinqDataSources to bind to DropDownLists for many of the criteria. It is not uncommon to use one controller for every page. Following this approach, I ended up with the same...

In a recent post, I mentioned that I was working on a customized grid view. Last week I completed the "binding to user settings" behavior. Then I took a look at the source and was stunned. I had almost 700 lines of code (and comments) and it wasn't well organized. So, I set out to start adding regions to the code to separate different behavior. The last sentence should have raised some flags. Regions to separate behavior? What happened to the cohesion of my grid view? I seem to have lost sight of...

So, I decided to put my custom GridView in a AJAX UpdatePanel. This was my first serious exposure to AJAX (asp.net). I discovered that I was having major problems. I kept getting an "unspecified error". Because it occurred whenever I clicked on a row, I assumed it had to do with the JavaScript I wrote for the GridView. I did tons of web searching about how to properly use script in a controlled wrapped in an update panel. I tried a few things, including embedding the script and registering the script...

A few nights ago I decided to work on a custom GridView. My goal (derived from a customer request) was to build some additional behavior into the GridView without having to write a whole bunch of client-side or code-behind code. These are the things that I am focusing on: Select a row when the user clicks on it (no CheckBox) Allow the user to select multiple rows (using Shift and Ctrl keys) Bind display settings to site preferences Column header text Bind display settings to user preferences Columns...

So, I learned something new yesterday. I haven't spent a lot of time in ASPX over the last couple of years, and when I did I didn't really pay attention to what is new. Well, I learned about the nifty DataSourceControl classes. In my case, I decided to use the LinqDataSource control. And I put it to use on a nested GridView with Paging I struggled for more hours than I care to admit to accomplish what I wanted. In the end, I was pleased at just how little code was required. Check out my full article...

The Load event came to my rescue