This is in ASP.NET 1.1. I have a repeater. I am handling the ItemDataBound event for that repeater. I want to implement conditional formatting. After trying a couple of things that doesn't work, I found this MSDN article that does allow me to manipulate the actual data value that is displayed but I remain unable to format the string using {0:N} or {0:P}, etc.

Here is the ItemDataBound event handler:



Protected Sub rptrCustomReport_OnItemDataBound(ByVal source As Object, ByVal e As RepeaterItemEventArgs) Handles rptrCustomReport.ItemDataBound
        If e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.Item Or _
            e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.AlternatingItem Then

            Dim dbr As DbDataRecord = CType(e.Item.DataItem, DbDataRecord)
            If Not IsDBNull(dbr("CurrentYearUnits")) AndAlso dbr("CurrentYearUnits") <> "ND" Then
                String.Format("{0:n}", CType(e.Item.FindControl("lblCyu"), Label).Text)
            End If
End If
    End Sub

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated as always!

Ok, I figured out my problem, which was related to String.Format() not to conditional formatting or handling the OnItemDataBound event in the repeater.

It seems the String.Format() method requires that you cast your argument that you want to format:

String.Format("{0:0,0}", Convert.ToInt32(myString))

This is about the dumbest way I can imagine to implement the Format method. I don't know why the hell it doesn't just cast whatever object you pass in to a string, try to apply to format, and if it is successful return the formatted string, else throw an error. This is how you would intuitively expect it to work!

As an aside, here is the link to how to do conditional formatting to a databound repeater:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317582