Creating a mailto link in codebehind for a dynamically generated gridview

Question

I am working on an internal directory service for my school and am having a problem creating "mailto:" links on a dynamically generated gridview from the codebehind.

After tinkering around for a while with this, I found out that Hyperlinkfields do not support the ":" character- making "mailto:" links not possible.

Because I am dynamically generating the Gridviews to allow for grouping by header, I am doing it all in the codebehind. The Gridviews are created reading from a datasource and added to a placeholder tag on the aspx page along with a corresponding label defining the group.

public void GenerateDynamicGVs()
    {
//...
            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
//...
         using (SqlDataReader dr = DBUtility.ExecuteReader(cmd, "www_ConMasterDBString"))
         {
            dt.Load(dr);

            var query = dt.AsEnumerable()
                 .GroupBy(r => r.Field<string>("GroupName"))
                 .Select(grp => new
                 {
                     GroupName = grp.Key,
                 })
                 .OrderBy(o => o.GroupName)
                 .ToList();

            foreach (var item in query)
            {

                Label NewLabel = new Label();
                NewLabel.Text = item.GroupName;
                NewLabel.CssClass = "DirectoryHeaders";
                GridView newGV = new GridView();
                newGV.CssClass = "CONServices";
                newGV.ShowHeader = false;
                newGV.AutoGenerateColumns = false;
                newGV.DataSource = dt.AsEnumerable().Where(p => p.Field<string>("GroupName") == item.GroupName)
                                                           .Select(p => new
                                                           {
                                                               id = p["id"].ToString(),
                                                               EntryName = p["EntryName"].ToString(),
                                                               EntryNumber = p["EntryNumber"].ToString(),
                                                               EntryContact = p["EntryContact"].ToString(),
                                                               Email = p["Email"].ToString(),
                                                               GroupName = p["GroupName"].ToString()
                                                           });

                HyperLinkField hlName = new HyperLinkField();
                BoundField bfNumber = new BoundField();
                BoundField bfContact = new BoundField();

                hlName.DataNavigateUrlFields = new string[] { dt.Columns[4].ToString() };
                hlName.DataTextField = dt.Columns[1].ToString();
                hlName.DataNavigateUrlFormatString = "mailto:{0}"; //This line executes, but is not a clickable link because of the colon.

                bfNumber.DataField = dt.Columns[2].ToString();
                bfContact.DataField = dt.Columns[3].ToString();

                newGV.Columns.Add(hlName);
                newGV.Columns.Add(bfNumber);
                newGV.Columns.Add(bfContact);

                divPlaceHolder.Controls.Add(NewLabel);
                divPlaceHolder.Controls.Add(newGV);

                newGV.DataBind();
            }
            dr.Close();
        }
    }

Is there a good way to create a mailto link in the codebehind? I can't convert it to the aspx file because of the need for dynamic creation. Am I missing something here? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

EDIT: The link needs to have the name displayed rather than the email address, requiring calling two columns from the datatable: [1] and [4].

Got it working, code is all below.

Where my gridview stuff is:

tfName.ItemTemplate = new NameColumn();

The class that was required for the TemplateField. It is a bit messy with the literal tags, but I am just happy for a solution that worked:

class NameColumn : ITemplate
{
    public void InstantiateIn(System.Web.UI.Control container)
    {
        Literal lit1 = new Literal();
        Literal litName = new Literal();
        Literal lit3 = new Literal();
        Literal litEmail = new Literal();
        Literal lit5 = new Literal();



        lit1.Text = "<a href=\"mailto:";
        lit3.Text = "\">";
        lit5.Text = "</a>";

        litEmail.DataBinding += new EventHandler(LabelEmailDatabinding);
        litName.DataBinding += new EventHandler(LabelNameDatabinding);

        container.Controls.Add(lit1);
        container.Controls.Add(litEmail);
        container.Controls.Add(lit3);
        container.Controls.Add(litName);
        container.Controls.Add(lit5);
    }

    private void LabelNameDatabinding(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Literal lit = (Literal)sender;

        GridViewRow row = (GridViewRow)lit.NamingContainer;

        lit.Text = DataBinder.Eval(row.DataItem, "EntryName").ToString();
    }

    private void LabelEmailDatabinding(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Literal lit = (Literal)sender;

        GridViewRow row = (GridViewRow)lit.NamingContainer;

        lit.Text = DataBinder.Eval(row.DataItem, "Email").ToString();

        if (lit.Text == null)
        {
            lit.Text = "test";
        }
    }
}

Dmitri E Dmitri E · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-16T18:43:25

Just curious, have you tried something like this:

hlName.DataNavigateUrlFormatString = "<a href=\"mailto:{0}\">{0}</a>";

or some variation of it?

Creating a mailto link in codebehind for a dynamically generated gridview

2 Answers