Question

I’ve got a Repeater and its SqlDatasource nested inside a Gridview TemplatedField.
The Repeater’s datasource SelectCommand is set using the FormatString of an Eval from the Gridview.
The SelectCommand has a WHERE clause which is to compare a string.
Because I have already used the single and double quotes, I am having trouble delimiting the string in the SQL WHERE clause.

How do I add single quotes inside an Eval FormatString?

I have tried using ‘Replace‘.
I have tried using ‘Special Characters‘ (… WHERE StringField = '{0}' …)

No luck so far. I appreciate any help you may be able to offer.

<asp:GridView ID='GridView1' runat='server' DataSourceID='DataSource1' DataKeyNames='Foo' AutoGenerateColumns='False' AllowSorting='true' >     <Columns>         <asp:BoundField DataField='Foo' HeaderText='Foo' SortExpression='Foo' />         <asp:BoundField DataField='Bar' HeaderText='Bar' SortExpression='Bar' />         <asp:TemplateField>             <ItemTemplate>                 <asp:Repeater ID='Repeater1' runat='server' DataSourceID='DataSourceNested'>                     <ItemTemplate>                         <asp:Label ID='Label1' runat='server' Text='<%# Eval('Blah') %>'></asp:Label>                     </ItemTemplate>                 </asp:Repeater>                 <asp:SqlDataSource ID='DataSourceNested' runat='server' DataFile='~/App_Data/DatabaseName'                     SelectCommand='<%# Eval('Bar', 'SELECT Blah FROM TableName WHERE (StringField = {0})') %>' >                 </asp:SqlDataSource>             </ItemTemplate>         </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns> </asp:GridView> 

Answer 1

Don’t forget that a .aspx page is simply XML. You just escape the quotes as you normally would.

For example:

<asp:Repeater ID='repeatTheLabel' runat='server'>     <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label ID='Label1' Text='<%# Eval(&quot;Id&quot;, &quot;This is item '{0}'.&quot;) %>' runat='server' />     </ItemTemplate>     <SeparatorTemplate>         <br />     </SeparatorTemplate> </asp:Repeater> 

When the above expression is databound the value between <%# and %> becomes:

Eval('Id', 'This is item '{0}'.')

…which produces on the HTML page as output when databound with an array of objects with ‘Id’ property values from 1 to 5:

This is item ‘1’.
This is item ‘2’.
This is item ‘3’.
This is item ‘4’.
This is item ‘5’.