Listview...editing/updating/inserting layout

RichardL1969 · July 2nd, 2012, 03:38 PM

Hello

After going through the Wrox beginning ASP.NET 4 (+ 1 other) I'm having a play setting up my first ever website.

Part of that involves an admin page, allowing me to edit/insert/delete "news" entries with a headline, summary, date etc.

I've used a listview for this, and I've got it displaying the entries I put on the database manually, but I'm having problems getting it to display in a way that doesn't look a right mess.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...969/zmrfc1.png

Is there a way of maybe getting the text left aligned, and the boxes right aligned, rather than just having them next to each other?

Thanks, Richard.

ps as a website newbie, does the sense of tearing you hair out in frustration at controls not having parameters you think they ought to have, pass as you learn more about the subject, or does it get worse?

Imar · July 3rd, 2012, 02:45 AM

Hi Richard,

You certainly can. The good thing about the ListView is that it's fully template driven, so you can control how it looks. Take a look at the InsertItemTemplate for example. You'll probably see something like this:

Code:

 
Date:
<asp:TextBox ID="DateTextBox" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("Date") %>' /> <br />
HeadLine:
<asp:TextBox ID="HeadLineTextBox" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("HeadLine") %>' /> <br />

As you can see this is plain HTML mixed with server controls so you can easily change how this looks by modifying the template code. For example you could wrap the controls in a table:

Code:

 
<table>
<tr>
  <td>Date:</td>
  <td><asp:TextBox ID="DateTextBox" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("Date") %>' /> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td>HeadLine:</td>
  <td><asp:TextBox ID="HeadLineTextBox" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("HeadLine") %>' /><td>
</tr>
</table>

You could experiment a bit with the available layouts (explained on page 507) and see which one works best as a starting point.

Quote:

does the sense of tearing you hair out in frustration at controls not having parameters you think they ought to have, pass as you learn more about the subject, or does it get worse?

I'd say: it gets better ;-) Until then, be sure to ask for help on this forum before you get bald completely....;-)

Cheers,

Imar

RichardL1969 · July 3rd, 2012, 06:16 AM

Thanks. It seems so obvious now.

I'd looked at arranging it using a table but couldn't see how I could make it work. All previous work with tables was mainly done with dragging and dropping from the toolbox into the table in design view, and obviously that can't be done with a whole ListView control.

Daft as it sounds now, I just hadn't made the mental step of "retro fitting" the table into the existing templates.

It still seems a little barmy to me that you can't format the layout of the listview using its own parameters, but that's probably me being picky/lazy. To people who know HTML like the back of their hand it probably would seem unecessary.

Imar · July 3rd, 2012, 07:13 AM

Yeah, I agree. However, considering the flexibility you have in designing the templates, I think it would be pretty difficult to provide design time capabilities for that.

I think you could move the code for, say, the InsertItemTemplate to another page, do your design work there, and then copy it back into the ListView when you're done. Not ideal, but it might help.

Quote:

To people who know HTML like the back of their hand it probably would seem unecessary.

Maybe. altough a quick preview would still help for them as well.

So, better start knowing HTML like the back of your hand then.... ;-)

Cheers,

Imar