ASP.NET GridView control with MySQL - UpdateQuery with spaces in parameters - asp.net

Question

I have a project I'm making with Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET Web Forms. In it, I have a GridView control that I bound to a MySQL table. It displays my table in the control without a problem, but after I enabled editing on the control I found I had problems updating fields in the table when the field has a space in it.
For example, I have the following table defined:
CREATE TABLE `test_table` (
`oid` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`first_column` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`second_column` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`third column` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`oid`)
)
Note one of the fields has a space in the name. This is where I have problems. In my page, I have the following code:
<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False"
DataKeyNames="oid" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1">
<Columns>
<asp:CommandField ShowEditButton="True" />
<asp:BoundField DataField="oid" HeaderText="oid" ReadOnly="True"
SortExpression="oid" />
<asp:BoundField DataField="first_column" HeaderText="first_column"
SortExpression="first_column" />
<asp:BoundField DataField="second_column" HeaderText="second_column"
SortExpression="second_column" />
<asp:BoundField DataField="third column" HeaderText="third column"
SortExpression="third column" />
</Columns>
</asp:GridView>
<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server"
ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:testcon %>"
ProviderName="<%$ ConnectionStrings:testcon.ProviderName %>"
SelectCommand="select * from test_table" UpdateCommand="update `test_table` set
`first_column` = #first_column,
`second_column` = #second_column
where
`oid` = #oid"></asp:SqlDataSource>
By way of the UpdateCommand, I am able to update first_column and second_column on this table just fine. Now I want it to update third column the same way, but it doesn't work. If I change the query to this:
update `test_table` set
`first_column` = #first_column,
`second_column` = #second_column,
`third column` = #third column
where
`oid` = #oid
It will give me this error when the query runs:
Parameter '#third' must be defined.
I've also tried #third\ column, #{third column}, #[third column], {#third column} - obviously none of these work. Therefore my question is: what do I put for my update query to be able to update my MySQL field that has a space in it?

Answer 1

You should be able to use any parameter name through the update parameters
http://www.asp.net/web-forms/tutorials/data-access/accessing-the-database-directly-from-an-aspnet-page/inserting-updating-and-deleting-data-with-the-sqldatasource-vb
<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server"
ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:testcon %>"
ProviderName="<%$ ConnectionStrings:testcon.ProviderName %>"
SelectCommand="select * from test_table" UpdateCommand="update `test_table` set
`first_column` = #first_column,
`second_column` = #second_column
where `oid` = #oid">
<UpdateParameters>
<asp:Parameter Name="first_column" Type="String" />
<asp:Parameter Name="second_column" Type="String" />
<asp:Parameter Name="third_column" Type="String" />
</UpdateParameters>
</asp:SqlDataSource>

Answer 2

A solution to this situation is to provide an alias name to the column in the Select statement that populates the Gridview. For example:
SELECT ..., [third column] AS third_column, ...
FROM ...
And then you can use #third_column as the parameter name. Since I anticipate that you may want to show the column header with a space instead of an underscore, you can set the HeaderText property of this field to what you want.
With this approach, the Update command of the GridView will easily map to the corresponding parameter (since they have the same name) and you don't have to change the definitions in your database. I also recommend using SQLServer Profiler to see the actual T-SQL code that is executed in the server.
Good luck!