Dealing with GridView Empty Cells

Consider a situation where you are displaying data in the GridView control and some of the cells does not contain anything and hence does not display anything. In this article we will see that how you can show certain messages when the cell inside the GridView control does not contain any data.

Introduction:

Populating the GridView Control:

The first task is to populate the GridView control. Here is the code that populates the GridView control.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (!Page.IsPostBack)

{

BindData();

}

private void BindData()

{

// make the query

string query = "SELECT * FROM Customer";

SqlConnection myConnection = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString);

SqlDataAdapter ad = new SqlDataAdapter(query, myConnection);

DataSet ds = new DataSet();

ad.Fill(ds, "Customer");

GridView1.DataSource = ds;

GridView1.DataBind();

}

private string ConnectionString

{

get { return @"Server=localhost;Database=MyDatabase;Trusted_Connection=true"; }

}

Here is what our GridView looks like:

As you can see in the above screen shot that some values of the FilePath column does not contain anything. Let's display an "X' where the file path does not exists.

Display an "X" where the column value does not exists:

Let's see how we can display an "X" where the value of the FilePath column does not exist.

<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" CellPadding="4"

ForeColor="#333333" GridLines="None" OnRowDataBound="GridView1_RowDataBound">

<asp:BoundField DataField="CustomerID" HeaderText="CustomerID" />

<asp:BoundField DataField="Name" HeaderText="Name" />

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="FilePath">

<asp:Label ID="lblFilePath" Text='<%# Eval("PicturePath") %>' runat="server"></asp:Label>

<asp:Image ID="imgPath" Visible="false" runat="server" />

</ItemTemplate>

</asp:TemplateField>

</Columns>

</asp:GridView>

Now, let's take a look at the code behind:

protected void GridView1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)

{

if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)

{

Label myLabel = (Label)e.Row.FindControl("lblFilePath");

string text = myLabel.Text;

if (text == null || text.Length < 1)

{

myLabel.Text = "X";

}

Now if you ran the page you will see that when the data for the FilePath column does not exists it will display an "X" sign.

let's make it little fancy and display an image instead of the "X" sign.

protected void GridView1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)

{

if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)

{

Label myLabel = (Label)e.Row.FindControl("lblFilePath");

string text = myLabel.Text;

Image myImage = (Image)e.Row.FindControl("imgPath");

myImage.ImageUrl = "Images/icon-delete.gif";

if (text == null || text.Length < 1)

{

myImage.Visible = true;

}

Take a look at the screen shot below:

I hope you liked the article. Please also download the complete code at the end of this article.

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