Chapter 13: Rendering Data with ASP.NET Web Controls
13.0. Introduction
ASP.NET provides several Web controls that make displaying data on a Web page easier than ever before. This chapter shows you how to take advantage of a process called data-binding to easily display data in a variety of formats using very little code. This chapter covers many of the most commonly used features of the Repeater, DataList, and DataGrid, including some fairly advanced DataGrid features. Using these data-bound Web controls, it is very easy to write data-driven Web Forms by just dragging and dropping a few controls onto a form and writing a few lines of code.
13.1. Rendering Data Directly on a Web Form
You want to display a piece of data on a Web Form using data-binding.
Technique
You can use the <%#%> syntax to easily bind data to a control. Simply create a variable, assign it a value, and call Page.DataBind to bind it to the page. The ASPX page is as follows:
<html>
<body>
<form id="Recipe1401vb" method="post" runat="server">
<asp:Label ID="MyLabel" Runat="server">Hello <%#FirstName%>!
</asp:Label>
</form>
</body>
</html>
In <script runat="server" /> block or codebehind:
Protected FirstName as string
Sub Page_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
FirstName="Jeremy"
Page.DataBind()
End Sub
Comments
If you are using codebehind, it is important to declare the variable with Protected access level so the page can access it. It is also important to realize that calling Page.DataBind() will result in all controls on the page being data-bound, because any time a control container calls its DataBind() method, it recursively calls the DataBind() method of all of its child controls.