ASP.NET 2.0 Free Tutorials : The GridView Control

In this tutorial you will learn about GridView Control, features of the GridView control, GridView supported field types and Creating a GridView control on a Page.

The GridView control is the official successor to the DataGrid control of yesteryears. It is no longer listed in the toolbox, even though it is supported by ASP.NET 2.0. All new projects would automatically use the GridView control. Though both these controls have a similar look and feel they are implemented differently as already explained in the earlier section of this tutorial. However, to reiterate some of the features of the GridView control let us list them:

• The GridView control is associated with the DataSource control through its DataSourceID property.
• In ASP.NET 2.0 there are several DataSource controls that are designed to work with different data sources.
• Enabling Editing and Deleting records in the GridView Control is as simple as setting the properties “AutoGenerateDeleteButton” and “AutoGenerateEditButton” as "True"
• GridView totally supports 6 field types, they are:

1. BoundField,

2. CheckBoxField,

3. ButtonField,

4. CommandField,

5. HyperlinkField,

6. ImageField and

7. TemplateField

Creating a GridView control on a Page

1. Create a Web site

2. Open the Default.aspx page in design view and drag a GridView control onto it.

3. Switch over to the Source view and examine the code. The following code will be displayed.

Click here to view sample code

4. For fetching records from a data source we need to add a SqlDataSource Control to the website. Click on the arrow and select . The Data Source configuration Wizard appears. Select SQL Database and specify an Id for the Data Source.

5. Click Ok. The Configuration Data Source wizard appears.

6. Click on New connection or select the connection for the application from the drop down list.

7. Next specify the columns that are to be bound to the GridView from the table.