Wondering the best way to populate a GridView with my object data.
I have to show a product list from an complex object Sale
, whose structure is something like this:
class Sale {
int id;
List<SaleItem> saleItems;
}
class SaleItem {
int id;
int quantity;
Product product;
BillingAddress billingAddress;
ShippingAddress shippingAddress;
}
class Product {
int id;
string name;
List<BuyingConfiguration> buyingConfigurations;
}
class BuyingConfiguration {
string name; // like size, color, material
string value;
}
and my grid should look like this:
Sale Items
+---------+---+------------+------------+----------------+
| Name | # | B. Address | S. Address | Configurations |
+---------+---+------------+------------+----------------+
| Ferrari | 2 | -- | -- | Color: red |
| | | | | Engine: Xyz |
+---------+---+------------+------------+----------------+
| Jax | 1 | -- | -- | Color: blue |
| | | | | Engine: Abc |
+---------+---+------------+------------+----------------+
Should I implement an ObjectDataSource for my Sale
object? Is there any better solution?
EDIT 2: Let me try to make myself clear: the problem is not how to the display configurations.
My problem is that the Sale
object is returned to my code from the persistence layer, thats the why I dont want the GridView to access Database directly. Instead, it needs to load all its data from my Sale
object, how to achieve that?
EDIT:
The Grid markup as requested:
<asp:GridView runat="server" ID="GridProdutos" OnRowDataBound="GridProdutos_OnRowDataBound"
AutoGenerateColumns="False">
<Columns>
<asp:BoundField HeaderText="Name" />
<asp:BoundField HeaderText="#" />
<asp:BoundField HeaderText="B. Address" />
<asp:BoundField HeaderText="S. Address" />
<asp:BoundField HeaderText="Configurations" />
</Columns>
</asp:GridView>
Ugly solution so far, using OnRowDataBound (I want to avoid that!):
protected void GridProdutos_OnRowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e) {
if (e.Row.DataItem == null)
return;
SaleItem item = (SaleItem )e.Row.DataItem;
e.Row.Cells[0].Text = item.product.name;
e.Row.Cells[1].Text = item.quantity.ToString();
StringBuilder sbConfigurations = new StringBuilder();
foreach (BuyingConfiguration configurationItem in item.product.buyingConfigurations) {
sbConfigurations.AppendFormat("{0}: {1}<br />", configurationItem.name, configurationItem.value);
}
e.Row.Cells[4].Text = sbConfigurations .ToString();
}
I would suggest using the TemplateColumns with binding expressions. You can bind your GridView to the saleItems list, and implement getter methods to render each field given a SaleItem instance. For example, your Name column could be defined as follows:
<asp:TemplateField>
<ItemTemplate>
<%# ((SaleItem)Container.DataItem).product.Name %>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>
The same thing could be done with a custom getter method to move the access details into the code-behind:
<asp:TemplateField>
<ItemTemplate>
<%# getSaleItemProductName((SaleItem)Container.DataItem) %>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>
Don't forget to add an Import directive to be able to reference your types:
<%@ Import Namespace="YouNamespaceHere" %>