Question

I basically have an entity that gets bound to my gridview and has a string value like this: ‘data1|data2|data3|data4’.

Is there a more efficient or better way of doing this than the method I am currently using below?

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="rptCentres">
<ItemTemplate>
    <h2><%#Eval("Centre.Name") %> ( <%#Eval("Entities.Count") %> )</h2>
    <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="dgShotlist" AutoGenerateColumns="false">
        <Columns>
        <asp:TemplateField>
            <itemtemplate>
                <p><%#Eval("ImageContainer.Title").ToString().Split('|')[0]%></p>
            </itemtemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
        <asp:TemplateField>
            <itemtemplate>
                <p><%#Eval("ImageContainer.Title").ToString().Split('|')[1]%></p>
            </itemtemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
        <asp:TemplateField>
            <itemtemplate>
                <p><%#Eval("ImageContainer.Title").ToString().Split('|')[2]%></p>
            </itemtemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
        <asp:TemplateField>
            <itemtemplate>
                <p><%#Eval("ImageContainer.Title").ToString().Split('|')[3]%></p>
            </itemtemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
      </Columns>
    </asp:GridView>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

Answer 1

Assuming, you explicitly bind data to the repeater only:

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="rptCentres">
    <ItemTemplate>
        <h2><%# Eval("Centre.Name") %>(<%# Eval("Entities.Count") %>)</h2>
        <asp:GridView runat="server" 
            ID="dgShotlist" 
            AutoGenerateColumns="false" 
            DataSource=<%# ((string)Eval("ImageContainer.Title")).Split('|') %>>
            <Columns>
                <asp:TemplateField>
                    <ItemTemplate>
                        <p><%# Container.DataItem %></p>
                    </ItemTemplate>
                </asp:TemplateField>
            </Columns>
        </asp:GridView>
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

here I specify data source for the inner GridView as title splitted by | symbol which should be of type string[]by using ((string)Eval("ImageContainer.Title")).Split('|').