Programming ASP.NET, 3rd Edition

GridView Control

Now that you have a working data source control on your web page, let’s hook it up to a control to display the data you’ve retrieved. You will use a GridView control, the workhorse data grid in ASP.NET.

The GridView is derived from the BaseDataBoundControl class, along with many other controls, such as the AdRotator, DetailsView, and FormView controls, the members of the ListControl class, such as CheckBoxList, RadioButtonList, and so on, and composite controls, such as the password controls, wizards, and so on. The DataGrid and DataList controls derive from BaseDataList, not BaseDataBoundControl. (Refer to Figure 3-3 in Chapter 3 for a schematic diagram of the class structure of System.Web.UI.Control.) Though they derive from different base classes, the GridView and the DataList (described later in this chapter) share many of the same properties.

Tip

Users of ASP.NET Version 1.x, will probably now use a GridView rather than a DataGrid control. GridView does all that the DataGrid does and much more, including providing easier paging and sorting. The DataGrid is fully compatible with Version 2.0, with no requirement to modify existing projects to run under the new version.

Many of the most commonly used properties of the GridView control not inherited from the control or WebControl classes are listed in Table 9-1. Many of these properties are described and used in subsequent sections of this chapter.

Table 9-1. GridView properties not inherited from WebControl

Property ...