GridView - using CSS-Friendly Control Adapters removes EmptyDataTemplate and EmptyDataText

Question

As pointed out in the question:

• EmptyDataTemplate and EmptyDataText not working in GridView

  using CSS-Friendly Control Adapters removes the data that would would be populated by EmptyDataTemplate or specified in EmptyDataText in GridView.

One of the solutions is to disable the addapters for GridView components as specified in this answer

Is there a solution, that would allow to keep the use of CSS-Friendly Control Adapters for GridView and still take advantage of EmptyDataTemplate functionality?

Answer 1

If you look at the source for the CSS-Friendly adapter for GridView, provided in your link, you will see the following (note the missing else):

private void WriteRows(HtmlTextWriter writer, GridView gridView, GridViewRowCollection rows, string tableSection)
{
    if (rows.Count > 0)
    {

Basically the adapter makes no mention of EmptyDataTemplate or EmptyDataText - it's a simple oversight. Patching it is straightforward though. All you have to do is take the source provided, look at how the original GridView renders it, combine the concepts, and rebuild the original adapter:

case DataControlRowType.EmptyDataRow:
                if (this._emptyDataTemplate == null)
                {
                    container = new TableCell();
                    string emptyDataText = this.EmptyDataText;
                    if (emptyDataText.Length > 0)
                    {
                        container.Text = emptyDataText;
                    }
                    break;
                }
                container = new TableCell();
                template = this._emptyDataTemplate;
                break;
        }
        if (container != null)
        {
            if (columnSpan > 1)
            {
                container.ColumnSpan = columnSpan;
            }
            if (template != null)
            {
                template.InstantiateIn(container);
            }
            row.Cells.Add(container);
        }

Answer 2

Add the following to RenderContents in GridViewAdapter.cs right before the ///// BODY //// section /////////////// EmptyDataTemplate ///////////////////////

if (gridView.Rows.Count == 0) {
    //Control[0].Control[0] s/b the EmptyDataTemplate.
    if (gridView.HasControls()) {
        if (gridView.Controls[0].HasControls()) {
            if (gridView.Controls[0].Controls[0] is GridViewRow) {
                rows.Clear();
                rows.Add(gridView.Controls[0].Controls[0]);
                gvrc = new GridViewRowCollection(rows);
                WriteRows(writer, gridView, gvrc, "tfoot");
            }
        }
    }
}   

And add the following to GetRowClass right before return className.Trim();

//// EmptyDataTemplate 
if ((row.RowType & DataControlRowType.EmptyDataRow) == DataControlRowType.EmptyDataRow) {
className += " AspNet-GridView-Empty ";
}

Finally, if you want to override the standard tfoot style, add a CSS section

.AspNet-GridView table tfoot tr.AspNet-GridView-Empty td
{

}