How to use jqGrid with C#/ASP.NET and JSON.NET (and no AJAX.NET stuff)?

Question

OK, I've been looking into this a few days and am not particularly sure what I am doing wrong. If anyone has working examples of using jqGrid with C#/ASP.NET and open source tools, please, please let me know where to find them. Any tips on finding decent documentation or tools I could use to debug this would be most appreciated too (I'm pretty new to js/jQuery). Basically I just need the edit-in-place functionality, so if I'm overlooking another obvious solution for that, it could be helpful to know... I'd like to avoid using AJAX.NET if at all possible.

I feel like I'm just overlooking something really obvious here.

In the following example, I do get the jqGrid to display, but it shows no data.

Here is the relevant JavaScript:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){ 
    jQuery("#role_assignment_table").jqGrid({ 
        url:'http://localhost:4034/WebSite2/PageItemHandler.asmx/GetPageItemRolesJson?id=3',
        mtype: 'GET',
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        datatype: "jsonstring",
        colModel:[
            {name:'Id', label:'ID', jsonmap:'Id'},
            {name:'Title', jsonmap:'Title'},
            {name:'AssignedTo', label:'Assigned To', jsonmap:'AssignedTo'},
            {name:'Assigned', jsonmap:'Assigned'},
            {name:'Due', jsonmap:'Due'},
            {name:'Completed', jsonmap:'Completed'}
        ],
        jsonReader: {
            page: "Page",
            total: "Total",
            records: "Records",
            root: "Rows",
            repeatitems: false,
            id: "Id"
        },
        rowNum:10,
        rowList:[10,20,30],
        imgpath: 'js/themes/basic/images',
        viewrecords: false,
        caption: "Role Assignments" 
    });  
});

---

The HTML:

<table id="role_assignment_table" class="scroll" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" />

---

The generated JSON: I'm not sure if it makes it to the jqGrid, or if the jqGrid doesn't like my JSON or my WebMethod, but I can call it myself when I go to the proper URL and get the JSON result string.

{"Page":"1","Total":1.0,"Records":"4",
"Rows":[
{"Id":1,"Item":null,"Title":"Story Manager","AssignedTo":null,"Assigned":"\/Date(1245186733940-0500)\/","Due":"\/Date(1248383533940-0500)\/","Completed":"\/Date(1247087533940-0500)\/"},
{"Id":2,"Item":null,"Title":"Analysis","AssignedTo":null,"Assigned":"\/Date(1245186733940-0500)\/","Due":"\/Date(1248383533940-0500)\/","Completed":"\/Date(1247087533940-0500)\/"},
{"Id":3,"Item":null,"Title":"Narrative","AssignedTo":null,"Assigned":"\/Date(1245186733940-0500)\/","Due":"\/Date(1248383533940-0500)\/","Completed":"\/Date(1247087533940-0500)\/"},
{"Id":4,"Item":null,"Title":"Graphic","AssignedTo":null,"Assigned":"\/Date(1245186733940-0500)\/","Due":"\/Date(1248383533940-0500)\/","Completed":"\/Date(1247087533940-0500)\/"}
]
}

Cheers, William Riley-Land

Answer 1

Before doing anything else, download and install this:

http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/

It will let you see exactly what is being requested and sent back by the jqGrid requests to get the JSON data.

I have some code for a working jqGrid, and here's something different:

datatype: "json"

Instead of your:

datatype: "jsonstring"

I also have a field called colNames which is an array of strings containing column names.

Finally, I have a pager field which identifies an element that will store the paging controls, and is a DIV.

Answer 2

If you have problems getting jqGrid to work with ASP.NET, please have a look here. This should save you a lot of time.

Answer 3

Hello,

In ASP.NET, Date gets serialized as JSON "\/Date(ticks)\/" which can not be interpreted by jqGrid. Possible solutions (post):

• write a custom formatter for the grid
• change the data we send to the grid (by sending formatted date as string)

Please tell how did you implement date display with jqGrid ?

Thank You.

Answer 4

I had exactly the same problem! The solution I came up with is to create a custom JavaScript formatter:

$(this).jqGrid({
... colModel: [ { name: 'SomeDate', index: 'SomeDate', width: 100, formatter: ndateFormatter } }], ...

});

// Convert C# json Date.

function ndateFormatter(cellval, opts, rwdat, _act) {

var time = cellval.replace(/\/Date\(([0-9]*)\)\//, '$1');
var date = new Date();
date.setTime(time);
return date.toDateString();

}

Answer 5

Be careful with the case sensitive property datatype is meant to be dataType with uppercase T.