Question

I have gridview binded to a dumb business object. The business object had 30 fields & I only needed to display 8 in my gridview so the rest of fields of the business object were being wasted.

I was advised to design a DTO for this purpose. I have designed a DTO but it does not look any different than a dumb business object itself ?

Currently I have the DTO for the grid, its collection class List <DTO> and a DAL class. I am filling the DTO in DAL and returning it to presentation layer.

Is this the right way ? Do I have to make a base class for the DTO ?

My DTO atm looks like this

public class ftMasterSummaryDTO
{
    private int ftId;
    private DateTime entryDate=DateTime.MinValue;
    private int ftYear;
    private string ftCateg=string.Empty;
    private string ftType=string.Empty;

    public int FtId
    {
        get { return ftId; }
        set { ftId = value; }
    }

    public DateTime EntryDate
    {
        get { return entryDate; }
        set { entryDate = value; }
    }

    public int FtYear
    {
        get { return ftYear; }
        set { ftYear = value; }
    }

    public string FtCateg
    {
        get { return ftCateg; }
        set { ftCateg = value; }
    }

    public string FtType
    {
        get { return ftCateg; }
        set { ftCateg = value; }
    }

}

Answer 1

Use ObjectDataSource to bind the GridView to your custom-business-objects. Create a DTOManager class that shall return the IList for your DTOs. Then in the design-mode of the GridView you can remove the coloumns you do not wish to display.

Your DTOManager class may look like this.

/// <summary>
/// Business Manager class for DTO object
/// </summary>
[DataObjectAttribute()]
public class DTOManager
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Function to get all DTOs records
    /// </summary>
    /// <returns>Returns List of DTOs</returns>
    [DataObjectMethod(DataObjectMethodType.Select, true)]
    public static IList<DTO> GetDTOs()
    {
        return DTO_DB.GetAll();
    }

}

Note: You can then bind your GridView to ObjectDataSource in the Design mode. Your ObjectDataSource configuration wizard will automatically detect [DataObjectAttribute] DTOManager and it’s SELECT method GetDTOs.