Question

It seems that controls like BoundField only work inside data binding containers like e.g. a GridView, where there is repeating data. I would like to know how to code something like a BoundField that will work e.g. inside the ItemTemplate of a data bound FormView. Just look how much more readable the MyFormViewBoundField is below compared to the raw template way of doing this.

The current way of doing it:

<ItemTemplate>
    <div class="span-12 last">
        <dl class="name-value">
            <dt>Property Type</dt>
            <dd><%# Eval("property_type_full") %></dd>
        </dl>
    </div>
</ItemTemplate>

Compared to what I wish to do:

<ItemTemplate>
    <div class="span-12 last">
        <mystuff:MyFormViewBoundField LabelText="PropertyType" DataValueField="property_type_full" />
    </div>                
</ItemTemplate>

Answer 1

You can do this with a simple server Control and customise as required.

public class DataBindField : CompositeControl
{
    private HtmlGenericControl dt;
    private HtmlGenericControl dd;

    public string LabelText { get; set; }

    public string DataValueField { get; set; }

    protected override void OnDataBinding(EventArgs e)
    {
        EnsureChildControls();
        base.OnDataBinding(e);

        object dataItem = DataBinder.GetDataItem(NamingContainer);
        if (dataItem != null)
        {
           dd.InnerText = DataBinder.Eval(dataItem, DataValueField) as string;
        }
        dt.InnerText = LabelText;
    }

    protected override void CreateChildControls()
    {
        base.CreateChildControls();
        var dl = new HtmlGenericControl("dl");
        dt = new HtmlGenericControl("dt");
        dd = new HtmlGenericControl("dd");

        dl.Controls.Add(dt);
        dl.Controls.Add(dd);

        Controls.Add(dl);
    }
}

Obviously adding support for ViewState or design-time support requires more work, but that’s the basics.