Question

Say I have a data structure like a Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, int>> or similar, and I want to render this as an HTML table with row-headers as the first string key, and column headers as the second string key. Is there a built-in or other Control for this?

Answer 1

There are no built in controls that will recognize a complex data structure like that. You’ll need to do a bit of custom coding for it.

You could probably easily accomplish it with a Repeater with an ItemDataBound event handler. Just off the top of my head, no testing:

<asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" runat="server"  OnItemDataBound=" Repeater1_OnItemDataBound">
<ItemTemplate>
   <asp:Literal ID="Literal1" runat="server" />
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>


protected void Repeater1_OnItemDataBound(Object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item || e.Item.ItemType ==
          ListItemType.AlternatingItem)
    {
        var rowHeader= (e.Item.DataItem).Key;
        var columnHeaders = (e.Item.DataItem).Value;
        foreach (var header in columnHeaders)
        {
              // build string to populate table row, assign to Literal1
        }
    }
}