Question

I am trying to bind an ASP.NET GridView control to an string array and I get the following item:

A field or property with the name
‘Item’ was not found on the selected
data source.

What is correct value I should use for DataField property of the asp:BoundField column in my GridView control. Here is my source code:

ASPX page

<asp:GridView ID="MyGridView" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false">
    <Columns>
        <asp:BoundField DataField="Item" />
        <asp:CommandField ButtonType="Link" ShowSelectButton="true" SelectText="Click Me!" />
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>

Code Behind:

string[] MyArray = new string[1];
MyArray[0] = "My Value";
MyGridView.DataSource = MyArray;
MyGridView.DataBind();

UPDATE

I need to have the AutoGenerateColumns attribute set to false because I need to generate additional asp:CommandField columns. I have updated my code sample to reflect this scenario

Answer 1

One method is to pass it a class with a single, named field. That way, you can give it a name.

public class GridRecord
{
    public string MyValue { get; set; }
}

Then convert your string array to a list of the class

string[] MyArray = new string[1];
MyArray[0] = "My Value";
List<GridRecord> MyList = (
    from ar in myArray
    select new GridRecord
    {
        MyValue = ar
    }).ToList();
MyGridView.DataSource = MyList;
MyGridView.DataBind();

Now you can name your DataField property

<asp:GridView ID="MyGridView" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false">
    <Columns>
        <asp:BoundField DataField="MyValue" />
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>