Question

I am having a gridview in asp.net and now I want the cell value by the column name but not by the cell index.

How would be it possible by retrieving the cell value by the cell column name

Answer 1

GridView does not act as column names, as that’s it’s datasource property to know those things.

If you still need to know the index given a column name, then you can create a helper method to do this as the gridview Header normally contains this information.

int GetColumnIndexByName(GridViewRow row, string columnName)
{
    int columnIndex = 0;
    foreach (DataControlFieldCell cell in row.Cells)
    {
        if (cell.ContainingField is BoundField)
            if (((BoundField)cell.ContainingField).DataField.Equals(columnName))
                break;
        columnIndex++; // keep adding 1 while we don't have the correct name
    }
    return columnIndex;
}

remember that the code above will use a BoundField… then use it like:

protected void GridView_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
    {
        int index = GetColumnIndexByName(e.Row, "myDataField");
        string columnValue = e.Row.Cells[index].Text;
    }
}

I would strongly suggest that you use the TemplateField to have your own controls, then it’s easier to grab those controls like:

<asp:GridView ID="gv" runat="server">
    <Columns>
        <asp:TemplateField>
            <ItemTemplate>
                <asp:Label ID="lblName" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>' />
            </ItemTemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>

and then use

string columnValue = ((Label)e.Row.FindControl("lblName")).Text;