First Steps with ASP.NET.

I just hate those DataGrids!

[bateman_ap]

After txbakers excellent thread, Is ASP. NET worth learning?, I bit the bullet, bought a few books and decided to transfer my clunky ASP skills to .NET.

Am currently using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express to make my pages and there are a few lovely bits. The ease of creating a drop down box and posting back for instance is lovely. However there is one thing that I can't for the life of me work out and is my most used ASP bit!

In traditional ASP I would create a header include with all my different SQL connection strings which I understand are now in the master config file. I would then create a SQL statement, ie
sSQL = "SELECT Name FROM Albums ORDER BY Name"
Set RsAlbum = Conn.Execute(sSQL)

I could then build a menu using
Do Until RsAlbum.EOF
Name = RsMenuDisplay("Name")
Albums = RsMenuDisplay("Albums ")%>
<a href="/albums/<%=(Albums)%>.htm"><%=(Name)%></a><br />
<%RsAlbum.MoveNext
Loop%>

However in .NET I just can't see how I can do this. All my books reference Datagrids and suchlike which produce tables and are impossible to get to look nice even if I wanted them (which I don't!)

I think at the moment it is the only thing stopping me getting along, can anyone help!

Many thanks

[txbakers]

TEE HEE! Welcome to re-learning he**!

It is possible to do what you want to do in .NET. (If I understand you correctly...)

I have one of these:
<asp:dropdownlist id="ddNames" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True" DataValueField="idnum" DataTextField="fulln" Width="190px"></asp:dropdownlist>

which has the ID of "ddnames"

Then, in a code behind I have this:
Private Sub BindDDL()
dlFams = DB.getFams
ddNames.DataSource = dlFams
ddNames.DataMember = "Families"
ddNames.DataTextField = "fulln"
ddNames.DataValueField = "idnum"
ddNames.DataBind()
ddNames.Items.Insert(0, New ListItem("-- Choose a Household --"))

End Sub

which binds the data to the dropdownlist.

Then I have a separate routine to capture the onChange event of that and do something.

Personally, I find it a lot more work than the classic way, but I'm still ignorant about the capabilities of .NET.

[bateman_ap]

Sorry, think I must have confused everyone!
Question wasn't about Dropdowns, it was rather about how to display fields outside a datagrid.

So for example I used to use
Name = RsAlbum("Name")
<%=(Name)%>

to display a field. I can't see how to do this in .NET, it only seems to allow me to put it in a dataset which I don't want to do as it is all in tables etc!

I think this might be a long and painfull road, something as simple as include files seems to be laboured!

[mfewtrell]

You should look at the Repeater control.

Basically you bind the repeater to the data source and then specify what HTML repeats along with a header and footer section in the repeater.

This can for example have the <table> in the header, the </table> in the footer and all the <tr><td>......</tr> in the repeating section.

More commonly though I use it for lists by just sticking the <ul> in the header, </ul> in the footer and <li> ..... </li> around the repeating data. You then style the list using CSS.

There are loads of variations and the code behind is about 3 or 4 lines.

[bateman_ap]

Fantastic, that worked perfectly.
If I just returned one record form the database, I presume I wouldn't use that again would I?

[mfewtrell]

I'm not quite sure exactly what you have in mind but you should be able to bind most controls to most data sources.

So for instance if you only have a single record you could use a literal control and bind the text property to your data source. If you use the label control it will add some <span> 's that you may not want.