Binding Data to ASP.NET 2.0 Server Controls
I'm teaching the ASP.NET 2.0 Programming class at Interface Technical Training this week and had a few people ask questions about how to embed controls such as a DropDownList into a DetailsView and use it while in edit mode. The sample code below demonstrates one way of doing this without resorting to VB.NET or C# code and shows how the <%# Bind("FieldName") %> data binding expression can be used.
For example, the following code shows how to embed the DropDownList into a DetailsView control's EditItemTemplate and automatically select the proper value by using the Bind expression:
<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Country">
<EditItemTemplate>
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddl" runat="server"
SelectedValue='<%# Bind("Country") %>'
DataTextField="Country" DataValueField="Country"
DataSourceID="sdsCountries" />
</EditItemTemplate>
<ItemTemplate>
<%# Eval("Country") %>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>
<EditItemTemplate>
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddl" runat="server"
SelectedValue='<%# Bind("Country") %>'
DataTextField="Country" DataValueField="Country"
DataSourceID="sdsCountries" />
</EditItemTemplate>
<ItemTemplate>
<%# Eval("Country") %>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>
The code also demonstrates how to consume an RSS feed with the XmlDataSource control and the fundamentals of creating and using TableAdapters and Strongly-Typed DataSets with the ObjectDataSource control. Download the code below and change the connection string in web.config to point to your Northwind database to get the demo going.