Get XPath data for a bound repeater - asp.net

I have a Repeater element in my .aspx file that calls a bind sub in my CodeBehind on my OnItemDataBound event, similar to this:
Sub SomeRepeaterBinder(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As RepeaterItemEventArgs)
(code binding data to repeater form objects goes here)
:
(etc.)
For the most part, it works great, but here's the problem I'm trying to solve: if there is no data, I want it to either (1) hide the repeater item, or (2) exit the sub completely (or maybe both).
In order to do that, I need to know whether or not any data exists in my Repeater item. And despite reading loads of documentation about RepeaterItemEventArgs properties (and running lots of debuggers), I haven't been able to figure out the correct syntax.
Can someone help me out with this? I'm hoping this is an easy question with an easy answer.
Note: my data source is XML. My form objects and my Repeater data source have XPaths assigned to them. I'm working with VB.
Thanks in advance . . .

I don't know if this is the best answer for this, but here's how I got it to work.
I didn't use e.Item.DataItem at all. I took the XML data source for my repeater and used selectSingleNode (using the data source XPath) to return my value. If the resulting string is empty, I hide the row.
However, if anyone has a more elegant or robust answer, I'm all ears.

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DevExpress AspxGridView GetRowValues during BeforePerformDataSelect Event

So, I have a master grid and a detail grid within that master grid.
I am grabbing the masterkey from my parent grid via the BeforePerformDataSelect and placing this value into a session variable. At that point I also need to grab a value from the specific row that I am on. Lets call that variable SENT_DATE.
Here is some sample code.
Protected Sub gvDetails_BeforePerformDataSelect(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Dim gvDetails As ASPxGridView = (TryCast(sender, ASPxGridView))
Session("ID_NUMBER") = gvDetails.GetMasterRowKeyValue
Session("SENT_DATE") = gvDetails.GetRowValues("SENT_DATE")
End Sub
I have worked with DevExpress products a lot before but it has been quite some time. If I remember correctly, normally I just grab the e.VisibleIndex and I am able to go from there but in this specific event I am unable to grab this. I know the above code is incorrect for grabbing the variable SENT_DATE, but I am not sure what to do here.
Any ideas, advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. I have searched the DevExpress forums deeply.
You can use FocusedRowIndex property.
Session("SENT_DATE") = gvDetails.GetRowValues(gvDetails.FocusedRowIndex, "SENT_DATE")

asp.net List(of CustomObject) design

I've got a page that will bind a List(of CustomObject) to a gridview. The twist is that 'CustomObject' could be one of 3 different types of object (CustObjA, CustObjB, CustObjC). The page will not know what type of objects it is going to display until after the postback occurs (after there is a trip to the database to retrieve the objects). I build my grid dynamically from the codebehind depending on what the current Object type is. I'm finding that my code-behind is beginning to need a lot of "if typeOf object is..." statements, and I'd like to get away from that. Maybe a List isn't the way to do it - looking for any suggestions. I'm using vb.net/vstudio 2010/webforms.
thanks.
Why not use inheritence so CustObjA, B, C have the same superclass or inteface?
Simply implement an interface, that gives you access to data and receive a list of objects of such type.

ASP Net - Casting a Request.Form control from Code Behind

This seems really simple, but for some reason Im stumped..
Im dynamically generating an HTML Select Box, lets call it myselect. Im creating this select box based on some database values Im generating an HTML Select Box.. almost like a string that Im just spitting out to the page. So it's never a control in the codebehind, just part of a string thats rendered as HTML by the browser. If I submit my form, and in my codebehind I perform:
Dim myVal as String = Request.Form("myselect")
That code will give me the VALUE of the myselect select box. How can I refer to this control to cast it as a System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlSelect control? Request.Form seems to give me the value, but I want to reference the object itself..
If this select box isn't declared statically on your page (that is, you're adding it to the Control Collection), you'll have to do something like this: Dim MySelect as HtmlSelect = Page.FindControl("MySelect") as HtmlSelect
You'll have to forgive me if my casting syntax is a bit off -- I'm used to casting in C#.
If your dynamically generating the control in your code file, then it will not be available to you on post back. As long as you generate it again before the viewstate is processed (you can do it in your oninit), then you can access it as you would anything else.
MySelect.SelectedValue
In response to the comments above (thanks for your help), I found what Gabriel McAdams and jwiscarson had to say were true. In browsing the Request object, I found that its nothing more than a collection of key\value pairs. Performing Request.Form("myformobj") will return a value, because thats all thats available to the application. If necessary, I suppose I can whip up some nifty javascript to track form object types, but it's certainly not necessary in my case.
Thanks for the help

Why is the DataBind() method necessary?

Simple question, I guess.
For a long time I've blindly followed a (supposedly) common pattern when programmatically databinding my ASP.NET controls. Namely:
gridView1.DataSource = someList;
gridView1.DataBind();
However, if I were setting my GridView to bind to a DataSource control via the DataSourceID property, the call to DataBind() is unnecessary. Namely:
gridView1.DataSourceID = LinqDataSource1;
is sufficient.
Furthermore, if you try to set the DataSource property in ASPX markup, you are greeted with the following:
You cannot set the DataSource property declaratively.
I assume these are related, but I am still stumped as to why DataBind() is necessary. The difference between DataSource and DataSourceID is secondary - I can understand some magic taking place there. The real question is why doesn't the DataSource propery setter cause databinding automatically? Are there any scenarios in which we want to set the DataSource but not bind to it?
In ASP.Net, it's often important to have certain data available and ready at certain points in the page life cycle, and not before. For example, you may need to bind to a drop down list early to allow setting the selected index on that list later. Or you might want to wait a bit to bind that large grid to reduce the amount of time you hold that connection active/keep the data in memory.
Having you explicitly call the .DataBind() method makes it possible to support scenarios at both ends of the spectrum.
DataSource is a property of the BaseDataBoundControl class. DataSourceID is a property of the DataBoundControl class, which inherits from BaseDataBoundControl and did not exist before ASP.NET 2.0.
Since DataBoundControl is explicitly for displaying data in a list or tabular form, and BaseDataBoundControl cannot make that assumption, binding is not automatic when DataSource is set because the type of control may not match the structure of the data.
Of course, this is all just a guess based on the MSDN documentation, so I could be wrong.
I noticed that without using DataBind() that nothing will be displayed in my GridView so I always include it as shown in this section of code:
Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
' TableAdapter object.
' Provide communication between this application and the database.
'-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dim suppliersAdapter As New SuppliersTableAdapter
' Get the data from the TableAdapter into the GridView.
'------------------------------------------------------
GridView1.DataSource = suppliersAdapter.GetSuppliers()
' Display the result set from the TableAdapter in the GridView.
'--------------------------------------------------------------
GridView1.DataBind()
End Sub
Please forgive the extra commenting as I'm also still learning ASP.Net as well and the comments will help me learn better "what and why" to use certain statements.
Try this:
if (GridView1.EditIndex == e.Row.RowIndex)
{
TextBox t2 = (TextBox)e.Row.FindControl("TextBox2");
DateTime dt2;
if (DateTime.TryParse(t2.Text, out dt2))
{
t2.Text = dt2.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd");
}
}

Gridview sorting challenge when moving from Winforms to ASP.NET 2.0 Webforms

I have a problem with Gridview sorting that is similar to others but I'm binding to a collection object as opposed to a data table.
The existing business rules and data access layers of an application follow the pattern of having an object and, if you need a collection of objects of that type, to have another class inheriting CollectionBase and implementing IBindingList.
For desktop applications, it was easy to databind a gridview to one of these objects and there weren't any problems with turning on column sorting. Everything was 'in state' in the desktop app's presentation layer.
Now that code is being moved to a new web application (ASP.NET 2.0, VB codebehind pages).
I've played around with what I had to do to only have certain columns of the collection show up in the gridview and the gridview looked pretty good. When I turned on 'allow sorting', that's when the problems showed up.
I'm getting the error about not having a .Sorting method, etc. In researching this, I found all sorts of solutions that were easily implemented with dataviews if my source was a data table. But it's not - it's a collection. I tried to "cheap shot" a datasource by converting the collection to an XML memory stream and them trying to .ReadXML back into a dataset but that didn't work [Root element is missing error was as far as I got in the dataset.ReadXml(ioTemp) where ioTemp was the System.IO.MemoryStream used in the xml serializer].
Because of the old desktop apps, I've never had to worry about sorting a collection since the gridview handled it once it was loaded. In fact, it's a 'standard' that the collection's .SortProperty, .SortDirection and .ApplySort all through NotSupportedExceptions (I inherited this code from programmers long gone).
Is there an easy way to convert the collection to a data table or a way to sort the collection without having to go back to the database each time? Object Data Sources won't work becuase of the intricate rules in how the objects are built - the wizards in VS2005 just can't handle what we need to do (grabbing data from several tables conditionally to make an object).
Thanks in advance.
Have you considered client side sorting instead?
I have used the jquery tablesorter plugin in the past with ASP Gridviews.
http://tablesorter.com/
I had a similar issue and i needed to implement IComparable on the objects. Basically to sort a collection of objects you need a way to distinguish their order. The IComparable interface has one method called Compare which allows the .Net framework to work out the order of the objects when you sort them. You need to implement this method yourself to get the sort method to work.
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You don't mention the error message so i cant be sure if this is the case, can you post the error?
EDIT :
In regards to your comment; you can implement multi column sorting, it just requires more work. You can specify the fields to sort the collection by and then use this information within the CompareTo Method.
Have a look at this
Given that you apparently are populating the grid with a collection of your own objects, this sounds like a perfect job for Linq for Objects. With just a little elbow grease you can achieve what is effectively an SQL Select statement against your collection. Very cool stuff.
http://www.hookedonlinq.com/LINQtoObjects5MinuteOverview.ashx
Also, do you really just want to sort the data in the grid? If so, then'd definitely pursue using Linq against your objects. However, rarely does sorting the contents of the grid really answer the problem ("sorting the grid" usually translates into changing the access path of the data used to fill the grid.) Browser apps aren't like Windows apps and don't have a full-time connection to the underlying data source to make things happen quite as magically as the DataGridView in Windows makes things seem.
You can put link buttons with an On_Click event as the header's of each column.
When the event is triggered, figure out which header was clicked on (one method per header or a commandArgument value). Once that is know, do a .orderBy or .OrderByDescending by on the collection of objects, and put the result back in as datasource of the gridview and databind on that.
In the year since I originally asked this question, I managed to get a new 'standard' implemented so that collections of business objects were now generic lists.
So now a "Collection class" that is little more than a "Inherits List(Of MyBusinessObject)" with a Sort Method that looks like this (performance wasn't an issue):
Public Overloads Sub Sort(ByVal strPropertyName As String, ByVal strDirection As String)
Dim arSortedList As New ArrayList
For Each item As MyBusinessObject In Me
arSortedList.Add(item)
Next
arSortedList.Sort(New CaseInsensitiveComparer(Of MyBusinessObject)(strPropertyName, strDirection))
For intI As Integer = 0 To arSortedList.Count - 1
Item(intI) = arSortedList(intI)
Next
End Sub
This seemed to work perfectly with the methodology used by the GridView for firing events.

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