Question

I have a repeater on my page which I use to display a list of search results. My issue is that the page keeps throwing me a

Parser Error Message: The server tag is not well formed.

error because the repeater has no datasource

Repeater:

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="rptSearchResults" >
    <HeaderTemplate>
        <h3>Search results</h3>
    </HeaderTemplate>
    <ItemTemplate>
        <table>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <asp:Label runat="server" ID="lblTitle" Text="<%# Eval("title")%>"></asp:Label>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <asp:Label runat="server" ID="lblAdress" Text="<%# Eval("adress")%>"></asp:Label>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <asp:Label runat="server" ID="lblZipcode" Text="<%# Eval("zipcode")%>"></asp:Label>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <asp:Label runat="server" ID="lblCity" Text="<%# Eval("city")%>"></asp:Label>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <asp:Label runat="server" ID="lblType" Text="<%# Eval("type")%>"></asp:Label>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

Above this repeater is a form where users can type in search words for primarily title, adress, zipcode, city and type. The repeater isn’t supposed to fill out untill the user clicks the button which triggers the search and thus adds a datasource to the repeater.

Is there a way to make it work like I want it to?

Answer 1

I don’t think the lack of a data source is the problem – it should be fine. The error says “The server tag is not well formed.” – this means there’s a problem with the markup. A problem with an empty data source would cause a NullReferenceException or something similar. So, maybe the problem is your Label elements – try changing the Text attributes from this:

Text="<%# Eval("type")%>"

to this:

Text='<%# Eval("type")%>'

I think all the double quotes will confuse ASP.Net. Use a combination of single and double quotes.