Question

Can anyone give me a short snippet that, given a GridView that was originally bound to a simple string array, and given a GridViewRow row, will return the value that was bound to the row?

Answer 1

You can’t, the only property System.String has is Length, and DataKeyName expects a property of the object you are binding to. To answer your second question, here is an example of getting the string value from a GridViewRow.

In your ASPX file:

<asp:GridView ID='GridView1' runat='server'     OnRowDataBound='GridView1_RowDataBound' AutoGenerateColumns='false'>     <Columns>         <asp:TemplateField HeaderText='String Value'>             <ItemTemplate>                 <%# Container.DataItem %>             </ItemTemplate>         </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns> </asp:GridView> 

In your codebehind:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     string[] arrayOfStrings = new string[] { 'first', 'second', 'third' };     GridView1.DataSource = arrayOfStrings;     GridView1.DataBind(); }  protected void GridView1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e) {     if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow) {         // e.Row is of type GridViewRow         // e.Row.DataItem contains the original value that was bound,         // but it is of type object so you'll need to cast it to a string.         string value = (string)e.Row.DataItem;     } } 

The only reasonable workaround to the problem is to either create a wrapper class that has properties. Or if you are using .NET 3.5, you can use LINQ to make a temporary list which only includes your value as a property of the class. There is an example of this technique on MSDN Forums by vtcoder.

List<string> names = new List<string>(new string[] { 'John', 'Frank', 'Bob' });  var bindableNames = from name in names                     select new {Names=name};  GridView1.DataSource = bindableNames.ToList(); 

Then ‘Name’ would be the DataKeyName and BoundField DataField.