Introduction of Asp.net Datalist Control

Introduction of Asp.net Datalist Control:


ASP.NET DataList Control:

The DataList control like the Repeater control is a template driven, light weight control, and acts as a container of repeated data items. The templates in this control are used to define the data that it will contain. 

It is flexible in the sense that you can easily customize the display of one or more records that are displayed in the control. You have a property in the DataList control called RepeatDirection that can be used to customize the layout of the control.

The RepeatDirection property can accept one of two values, that is, Vertical or Horizontal. The RepeatDirection is Vertical by default. However, if you change it to Horizontal, rather than displaying the data as rows and columns, the DataList control will display them as a list of records with the columns in the data rendered displayed as rows.

This comes in handy, especially in situations where you have too many columns in your database table or columns with larger widths of data. As an example, imagine what would happen if there is a field called Address in our Employee table having data of large size and you are displaying the data using a Repeater, a DataGrid, or a GridView control. You will not be able to display columns of such large data sizes with any of these controls as the display would look awkward. This is where the DataList control fits in.

Introduction of Asp.net Datalist Control

DataList control in Asp.net:


In a sense, you can think the DataList control as a combination of the DataGrid and the Repeater controls. You can use templates with it much as you did with a Repeater control and you can also edit the records displayed in the control, much like the DataGrid control of ASP.NET. The next section compares the features of the three controls that we have mentioned so far, that is, the Repeater, the DataList, and the DataGrid control of ASP.NET.

When the web page is in execution with the data bound to it using the Page_Load event, the data in the DataList control is rendered as DataListItem objects, that is, each item displayed is actually a DataListItem. Similar to the Repeater control, the DataList control does not have Paging and Sorting functionalities build into it.

Use of DataList Control:


To use this control, drag and drop the control in the design view of the web form onto a web form from the toolbox.



More about DataList:




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