Designed a form for loading a single record from a db via business object ( let's call it bo). The business object is initialized during Page_Load and returns a DataView object (named Person) which is used to bound to form controls. Init code as follows:
Controls are bound to the DataView using DataBinder.Eval syntax and show selected data properly. No need of any grid, list, repeater and so on. Binding code as follows:
After hitting a "save" button

• no changes to the controls are available (e.g. textboxes)
• selectedvalue properties of dropdowns aren't properly stored
• no changes can be submitted to the db

The only statement in the "save button Click event is
Can't find a way out of it - any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance and Merry Christmas to all!

Andreas

OK - problem solved by incorporating the form in a datalist.
It works but, however it looks ugly to me using a list when only a single record is in scope.

So any better ideas are really welcome.

Andreas

The way I usually handle these kinds of forms is to load all the data programmatically driven by the page_load event. Then get the data from the controls in the onclick handler for the appropriate button(s) to update the database. IMO, two-way databinding in ASP.NET is (if it's even possible) more trouble than it's worth.

Thanks for answering.
As far as I understand your proposal I would have to collect all the data twice: once for validating and then for updating the database. Sounds not that effective. The ASP application I'm currently working on will be the Web interface for a very complex database application I wrote for a service agency. That application has to handle multilateral multipart contracts. The parts are depending on each other on several status levels. Each contract can be handled from several points of view: customer's view, agency's view and there are sub-contracters, freelancers and so on. For these reasons I decided to develop several business objects to handle the dependencies and wanted to bind the form controls directly to my BO's data objects. That way should let me use the business rules I've already developed for the local application and should be essential for driving the user through the web pages.
If I'm right your proposal does not bind the data properties of the form controls to the data objects but handles the values. That leads me to much more coding work.
I'm wondering why it seems to be impossible to bind form controls directly to user-defined data objects although there's an appropriate syntax available.

Sorry for any English mistakes and best wishes for a great 2005.

Andreas

The problem is with the stateless nature of a web page. Unlike a windows form application, your web form exists for only a brief amount of time (while the page is executing on the server). It is then sent to the browser and destroyed at the server. So you will always have to do some amount of reconstructing of objects/data at the server when the page is posted. This can be achieved thru storage of an object in view-state or session. This however could be taxing on the server resources if you are dealing with many or big objects. As experienced by many in the past, it's also sometimes not quite so reliable. It sounds like you might need to learn a bit more about web applications in general before you can successfully implement your business solution with a web app.

Nope,

developed some portals and pro web sites since 1996. The "stateless nature" was one of the reasons for my business objects (no viewstate necessary, session variables are much easier to handle) - this way I'm able to load data step by step and do not have to load it in regard to GUI states or actions.

The problem for me was not the page reload. From my point of views data-bound objects should be noticed about data changes via data-binding properties and can handle these changes through standard or user-defined events. Otherwise it makes no sense to me.