Binding gridviews to viewstate until being able to write to database

Question

I recently began working on a project which has many gridviews on a single page. During creation of a new record, the user needs to be able to add/remove/edit these gridviews and then save to the database at the end. The problem with this obviously is that there is no datasource to bind the data too until after its written to the database.

This data represents a 1..* relationship, which is why the gridview data cannot be written to the database until the parent record has been created first.

The best way I have found so far to solve this is to use viewstate. This solution however does not seem ideal to me. I am also forced to manually create the gridview functionality with OnDeleting, OnUpdating, etc so that I can manage the binding of the viewstate with the gridview.

Does anyone have any suggestions on a better way to manage this situation, it seems like it would be a common thing?

UPDATE:

Keep in mind this data needs to be around throughout postbacks.

Answer 1

Use a DataSet as an intermediate connection to your data source. Fill the DataSet with your data and then bind your GridView to the DataSet setting the GridView DataMember to the name of the table it is supposed to bind to.

As the user updates tables it will add/modify records in the DataTables in the DataSet. When the user is done editing and clicks "Save" your code can then update the database from the datasets, either automatically using a DataAdapter, or manually looking at the RowState of the rows in the DataTables.

Answer 2

Use a DataAdapter and a Dataset. Invoke the fillschema method in the adapter to create de metadata (cols, constraints, relations, etc) in the dataset. bind the data tables created to the different grid views. update manually cheking each row rowstate on each table or call the adapter's update method to do it automatically. If you do it automatically you need to define commands for insert, delete, and update in the adapter.