Question

I’m trying to bind a GridView HyperLinkField such that the bound column is used as a parameter value in the URL. Pretty standard stuff – nothing fancy, but the binding fails when the bound column contains a colon, i.e. :. I’m my particular case, this value is a string representing a duration of time, e.g. “14:35”, or “1:07:19”.

Here’s my GridView, with the time value bound to the HyperLinkField url.

<asp:GridView ID="ResultsGridView" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" 
    DataSourceID="ResultsDataSource" EnableModelValidation="True" 
        AllowPaging="True">
    <Columns>
        <asp:BoundField DataField="Year" HeaderText="Year" SortExpression="Year" />
        <asp:HyperLinkField DataNavigateUrlFields="RunTime" 
            DataTextField="RunTime" HeaderText="Hyperlink" 
            DataNavigateUrlFormatString="LinkedPage.aspx?param={0}" />
        <asp:BoundField DataField="RunTime" HeaderText="Time" 
            SortExpression="RunTime" />
        <asp:BoundField DataField="FullName" HeaderText="Name" 
            SortExpression="FullName" ReadOnly="True" />
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>

It produces HTML like this. Note that the <a> tags have no href attribute.

<tr>
    <td>2010</td><td><a>34:58</a></td><td>34:58</td><td>Joe Schmoe</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2010</td><td><a>35:30</a></td><td>35:30</td><td>Rod Krueger</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2010</td><td><a>35:38</a></td><td>35:38</td><td>Mike Johnson</td>
</tr>

But if I switch the bound field from RunTime to Year, i.e. to a column that doesn’t contain a colon in the values, it works as expected. Take the GridView above, and change the DataNavigateUrlFields attribute of the HyperLinkField, like so:

    <asp:HyperLinkField DataNavigateUrlFields="Year" 
        DataTextField="RunTime" HeaderText="Hyperlink" 
        DataNavigateUrlFormatString="LinkedPage.aspx?param={0}" />

And now the HTML output is correct, like this:

<tr>
    <td>2010</td><td><a href="LinkedPage.aspx?param=2010">34:58</a></td><td>34:58</td><td>Joe Schmoe</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2010</td><td><a href="LinkedPage.aspx?param=2010">35:30</a></td><td>35:30</td><td>Rod Krueger</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2010</td><td><a href="LinkedPage.aspx?param=2010">35:38</a></td><td>35:38</td><td>Mike Johnson</td>
</tr><tr>

So the nut of my question is this: how do I bind a data column with values that contain a colon to the URL of a HyperLinkField? Or, failing that, create the same bound hyperlink by another method?

Changing the format of the data to not include a colon would be a last resort, because LinkedPage.aspx expects the parameter value in that format, and it’s already written, tested and in use.

Answer 1

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Hyperlink">
        <ItemTemplate>
            <asp:HyperLink ID="HyperLink1" runat="server" 
                NavigateUrl='<%# Eval("RunTime", @"LinkedPage.aspx?param={0:hh\:mm}") %>' 
                Text='<%# Eval("RunTime", @"{0:hh\:mm}") %>'></asp:HyperLink>
        </ItemTemplate>
    </asp:TemplateField>