DataList Question

[Steve]

Hi

Please could someone suggest why this works :-

<aspataList id="myDL" runat="server">
<ItemTemplate>
<%# DataBinder.Eval container.DataItem, "Filename") %>
</ItemTemplate>
</aspataList>

and this doesn't :-

<aspataList id="myDL" runat="server">
<ItemTemplate>
<%# Container.DataItem("Filename") %>
</ItemTemplate>
</aspataList>

I get the following error msg in vis studio with the
latter.

'System.Web.UI.WebControls.DataListItem.DataItem' denotes
a 'property' where a 'method' was expected

Thanks for sharing your knowledge
Steve

 

[Teemu Keiski]

Hi,

the first one uses late-binding, that is evaluates the expression at runtime
(DataBinder.Eval is designed to locate the property and output its value as
text). The other version uses early-bind way, so it must follow the exact
rules for the programming language (you use C#?).

To work the second way, you'd need to cast the Container.DataItem to its
actual type, which depends on what you bind the DataList to (with dataReader
System.Data.Common.DBDataRecord and with DataSet/DataTable/DataView it is
System.Data.DataRowView), and then access the property like the programming
language supposes.