Gridview inside Gridview in ASP.NET C#

• Download source - 404.17 KB

Introduction

There are lots of situations that come up where we have to show a grid inside another grid, like:

And in selecting Expand, you will see that:

Here emp_address is in the second Gridview.

In our practical programming scenario, there are lots of situations that come up where we have to show a grid inside another grid. But we can get proper help of that because of proper support or sample. My intention is to give a clear, brief and easy idea of how to implement Nested Gridview or Gridview inside another gridview. Lots of people try to implement that but fail to implement properly.

How to Use

1. Firstly place a gridview in your solution.
2. Inside Itemtemplate, place your second gridview.
3. Place a button for Expand inside an itemtemplate.
4. In gridview rowdatabound, write the code to bind the second gridview.

Background

The basic idea behind this article is to describe the use of Nested Gridview. There are no proper samples of Nested Gridview.
These codes can be applicable to every Visual Studio compiler.

Using the Code

GridView control retrieved from the SQL database table can be used to uniquely identify the record. In my example, I have given the option for Update and Delete too.

In source, you have to work like that:

<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" 
        AutoGenerateDeleteButton="True" AutoGenerateEditButton="True" 
        onrowcancelingedit="GridView1_RowCancelingEdit" 
        onrowdeleting="GridView1_RowDeleting" onrowediting="GridView1_RowEditing" 
        onrowupdating="GridView1_RowUpdating" OnRowCommand="GridView1_RowCommand">
        <Columns>
        <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Name">
        <ItemTemplate>
         <asp:Label ID="lblID" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("ID") %>'></asp:Label>
         <%--<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text='<%# Container.DataItemIndex%>'>
	</asp:Label>--%>
        </ItemTemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
         <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="A">
        <ItemTemplate>
           <asp:Button ID="btnShow" runat="server" Text="Expand" 
	    CommandName="Show" CommandArgument='<%# Container.DataItemIndex%>' />
        </ItemTemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
            <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Name">
            <ItemTemplate>
                <asp:Label ID="lbl" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("emp_name") %>'>
		</asp:Label>
            </ItemTemplate>
            <EditItemTemplate>
                <asp:TextBox ID="txt" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("emp_name") %>'>
		</asp:TextBox>
            </EditItemTemplate>
            </asp:TemplateField>
            
            <asp:TemplateField>
            <ItemTemplate>              
                
            <asp:GridView ID="GridView2" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" 
        AutoGenerateDeleteButton="False" AutoGenerateEditButton="False" >
        <Columns>
         <asp:BoundField DataField="emp_address" HeaderText="emp_address" 
		SortExpression="emp_address">
                            <ItemStyle Width="20%" />
                        </asp:BoundField>
         </Columns>
    
</asp:GridView>

In my example, I have done the whole thing from one table. In my example, the database table looks like this:

In code behind, I have done things with RowCommand event.

The sample code is as given below:

 if (e.CommandName == "Show")
        {
            int RowIndex = Convert.ToInt32((e.CommandArgument).ToString());
            Button btn = (Button)GridView1.Rows[RowIndex].FindControl("btnShow");
           // Label lblID = (Label)GridView1.Rows[RowIndex - 1].FindControl("Label1");
           // int row = Convert.ToInt32(lblID.Text);
            if (btn.Text == "Expand")
            {

                //  Label lblID = (Label)gvDiscMaster.Rows[RowIndex].FindControl("lblID");
                GridView gv = 
		(GridView)GridView1.Rows[RowIndex ].FindControl("GridView2");

                long id = long.Parse
		(((Label)GridView1.Rows[RowIndex].FindControl("lblID")).Text);
                DataSet ds1 = new DataSet();
                ds1 = query.selectwithId(id);
                gv.DataSource = ds1;
                gv.DataBind();
                btn.Text = "Collapse";
            }
            else if (btn.Text == "Collapse")
            {
                GridView gv = (GridView)GridView1.Rows[RowIndex].FindControl("GridView2");

                long id = long.Parse(e.CommandArgument.ToString());
                //DataSet ds1 = new DataSet();
                // ds1 = query.selectwithId(id);
                gv.DataSource = null;
                gv.DataBind();
                btn.Text = "Expand";
            }
        }

Points of Interest

The basic idea behind this article is to describe the use of Nested Gridview. There are no proper samples of Nested Gridview.

History

• 2^nd May, 2011 - Submitted article