Question

Im using a repeater control and a databinder to display data from the database to my website.
example: DataBinder.Eval(Container, “DataItem.title”)

Sometimes the text is too long
Normally I use substring to display the preferred string in length.
But How do I do this with the databinder
And if the text is too long (> 20 characters) I want to truncate it and leave three dots behind.
How to do that ?

Answer 1

I’d suggest an extension method to do the heavy lifting, in order to make the markup as simple as possible:

public static string EvalTrimmed(this RepeaterItem container, string expression, int maxLength)
{ 
    string value = DataBinder.Eval(container, expression) as string;
    if ( value != null ) 
       return null;
    if (value.Length > maxLength)
       value = value.Substring(0,maxLength) + "...";
    return value;
}

Then use it in markup as:

<%# Container.EvalTrimmed("DataItem.Title", 20) %>