Is there any way to get a DetailsView control to render its HeaderText in a <th> cell?

Question

As the DetailsView uses <td> cells for both the header text and the data, I was wondering whether the behaviour of the control can be overridden to render the HeaderText of each row in a <th> cell?

Answer 1

There's no option built into the control itself. However, you can completely override the render behavior for any control, including DetailsView, by using a Control Adapter.

Answer 2

@Joel Coehoorn Thanks for the quick reply, but I was kind of hoping I wouldn't have to go down that route.

I was wondering whether it would be possible to override one of the control rendering methods to achieve this?

Someone seems to have had success rendering <th> cells but did not appear to disclose details - any other suggestions would be gratefully received.

Answer 3

I managed to find a way around this by using the ItemCreaed event handler and swapping the <td> cell for a <th> cell like this:

if (view.Rows.Count > 0) {
    // swap each header <td> cell for a <th> cell
    foreach (DetailsViewRow row in view.Rows) {
        if (row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow) {
            DataControlFieldCell td = row.Cells[0] as DataControlFieldCell;
            // skip the last row that contains our command controls
            if (td.Controls.Count > 0) {
                continue;
            }

            DataControlFieldHeaderCell th = new DataControlFieldHeaderCell(td.ContainingField);
            th.Text = td.Text;
            th.Attributes.Add("scope", "row");

            // add the new th and remove the old td
            row.Cells.RemoveAt(0);
            row.Cells.AddAt(0, th);
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

You could also inherit your own custom control from DetailsView, and then override the render method.