ASP.Net Databinding inside a bound control - asp.net

Question

I'm having a littl fun with ASP.Net data binding today, basically I have two nested controls, and an collection of objects with their own internal collections which I wish to bind...
So, say I'm using two repeaters like this ->
<asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1">
<ItemTemplate>
<asp:Label runat="server" Text='<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "HeaderText")%>'>
</asp:Label>
<asp:Repeater ID="Repeater2">
<asp:Label runat="server" Text='<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "DetailText")%>'>
</asp:Label>
</asp:Repeater>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>
And my objects look like this:
public class parent
{
public string HeaderText {get;set;}
public List<child> children {get;set;}
}
public class child
{
public string DetailText {get;set;}
}
How do I bind the inner repeater? I'm guessing that I need to set & bind the datasource of 'Repeater2' somewhere in the aspx to be the 'children' property of 'parent'?
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks

Answer 1

Bind the nested repeater in the main repeater ItemDataBound event.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.webcontrols.repeater.itemdatabound.aspx
Here you can find the control (FindControl) and bind to it.
It would be something like:
<asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" OnItemDataBound="Repeater1_ItemDataBound">
void Repeater1_ItemDataBound(Object Sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e) {
Repeater Rep2 = e.Item.FindControl("Repeater2");
Rep2.DataSource = //datasource here
Rep2.DataBind();
}

Answer 2

You would bind the inner repeater in the ItemDatabound event of the outer repeater:
protected void Repeater1_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
Repeater innerRepeater = e.Item.FindControl("InnerRepeater1") as Repeater;
if (innerRepeater != null)
{
innerRepeater.DataSource = GetSomeData();
innerRepeater.DataBind();
}
}
It might be easier to use a ListView or DataList if you need to use data from the outer databound control to bind the inner databound control, because you can specify datakeys.
<asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server" DataKeyNames="SomeColumn" ...>
Code-behind:
protected void ListView1_ItemDataBound(object sender, ListViewItemEventArgs e)
{
ListView innerList = e.Item.FindControl("InnerList1") as ListView;
if (innerList != null)
{
innerList.DataSource = GetSomeData((int)ListView1.DataKeys[ListView1.Items.IndexOf(e.Item)]["SomeColumn"]);
innerList.DataBind();
}
}