Editable, growable DataGrid that retains values on postback and updates underlying DataTable

Question

I'm trying to create an ASP.NET/C# page that allows the user to edit a table of data, add rows to it, and save the data back to the database. For the table of data, I'm using a DataGrid whose cells contain TextBoxes or CheckBoxes. I have a button for adding rows (which works) and a button for saving the data. However, I'm quite stuck on two things:

• The TextBoxes and CheckBoxes should retain their values on postback. So if the user edits a TextBox and clicks the button to add more rows, the edits should be retained when the page reloads. However, the edits should not be saved to the database at this point.
• When the user clicks the save button, or anytime before, the DataTable underlying the DataGrid needs to be updated with the values of the TextBoxes and CheckBoxes so that the DataTable can be sent to the database. I have a method that does this, but I can't figure out when to call it.

Any help getting this to work, or suggestions of alternative user interfaces that would behave similarly, would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Take a look at the ASP.NET GridView control. It's newer than the DataGrid and has editing features, editing events, etc built in.

Answer 2

Check out the following website:

http://highoncoding.com/Categories/7_GridView_Control.aspx

There are tons of articles on the above link about the GridView control.