Question

Aspx, Entity, on my gridView I made a footer for a new button. It shows when there are items, but not when data is empty. gridView’s ShowFooter = True. Not sure why it won’t show when empty, is there another property I maybe missing? I know a workaround could be place a dummy row in the database, but think there should be a better way to start off at 0. If you have any more questions, please ask.

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="New" >
        <FooterTemplate >
         <asp:Button ID="btnNew" CssClass="DDButton" runat="server" Text="New" CommandName="New" OnClick="new_item" />
        </FooterTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

Answer 1

.Net 4.0 added the ShowHeaderWhenEmpty property on the GridView but unfortunately no ShowFooterWhenEmpty. However there is still the EmptyDataTemplate:

<asp:GridView runat="server" ID="myGridView">
    <EmptyDataTemplate>
        <asp:Button ID="btnNew" CssClass="DDButton" runat="server" Text="New" CommandName="New" OnClick="new_item" />
    </EmptyDataTemplate>
</asp:GridView>

As this will not be in a GridViewRow I don’t think your RowCommand event will fire but you seem to be handling the click of the button in a separate method anyway.

Reference for GridView.EmptyDataTemplate: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/system.web.ui.webcontrols.gridview.emptydatatemplate.aspx