Development With A Dot

Displaying Empty GridView

What happens if your GridView control does not have any records to display? Well, if you set the EmptyDataText or EmptyDataTemplate properties, the grid will show something, only probably not what you'd like - the normal structure, as if it was populated with records. Here's a possible solution:

void ShowEmptyRow(GridView grid)
{
	if (grid.Rows.Count == 0)
	{
		DataTable table = new DataTable();

		for (Int32 i = 0; i < grid.Columns.Count; ++i)
		{
			if (grid.Columns [ i ] is BoundField)
			{
				table.Columns.Add((grid.Columns [ i ] as BoundField).DataField);
			}
			else
			{
				table.Columns.Add(grid.Columns [ i ].SortExpression);
			}
		}

		table.Rows.Add(table.NewRow());

		grid.DataSourceID = String.Empty;
		grid.DataSource = table;
		grid.DataBind();

		if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(grid.EmptyDataText) == false)
		{
			grid.Rows [ 0 ].Cells [ 0 ].ColumnSpan = table.Columns.Count;
			grid.Rows [ 0 ].Cells [ 0 ].Text = grid.EmptyDataText;

			while (grid.Rows [ 0 ].Cells.Count > 1)
			{
				grid.Rows [ 0 ].Cells.RemoveAt(1);
			}
		}
	}
}