C# GridView: Specifying CSS classes for specific rows

Question

I am creating a SharePoint web part in C# and part of it outputs a GridView control to the page. While I can get fairly extensive control over the way it is displayed by setting the CSS class of the GridView itself, what I would really like to do is be able to specify classes to certain specific td elements. I'm not sure how to go about doing this, or if it would be done at the time that the GridView is being populated with rows, or at the time the GridView is added to the page.

In pseudocode, what I had essentially envisioned was to be able to say something like gridView.Row[4].CssClass = "header," which would set the td of the fifth row in the GridView to the class "header."

I've looked into using the RowDataBound event, so I just used the following to test it:

protected void outputGrid1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
    e.Row.CssClass = "outputHeader";
}

It's probably my misunderstanding of how to use that properly, but it doesn't appear to do anything. I thought it would set all of the rows to the class "header," and if it had, I was going to work on my logic from there, but I can't even get that to work. Thanks for any help anyone can provide!

Answer 1

I do something similar with RowDataBound:

if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
{
    // Check the XXXX column - if empty, the YYYY needs highlighting!
    if (e.Row.Cells[6].Text == " ")
    {
       e.Row.CssClass = "highlightRow"; // ...so highlight it
    }
}

One way to check that what you are doing is correct is to monitor your html output via the browser... something like Firebug really helps.

Here's some sample CSS, where we assign the CssClass 'dataGrid' to the Grid:

/* Used to highlight rows */
table.dataGrid tr.highlightRow td
{
    background-color: #FF6666;
    border-bottom: 1px solid #C0C0FF;
}

Update: Wiring all this up: I use auto-wire-up on the aspx page. Your page declaration looks something like this:

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/XXXXXX.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="YYYY.aspx.cs" Inherits="ZZZ.ZZZ.AAAAAA" Title="View Blah" %>

This setting on the page allows you to use the UI to connect up the events. Click the grid, select the properties, click the lightning-strike icon, and under the RowDataBound event, select your method. All this does behind the scenes is add an attribute to the DataGridView, thus:

        <asp:GridView ID="uiActionGridView" runat="server" AllowSorting="True" AutoGenerateColumns="False"
        OnRowDataBound="uiActionGridView_RowDataBound" OnDataBound="uiActionGridView_DataBound">

• this shows two events being wired-up, the DataBound and RowDataBound events.

This is what I do using VS2005 and it all seems to 'just work'. The only thing that I can think you are experiencing is that you are manually binding the event after the databind has occurred.