ASP.NET 2.0 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Advanced Data Retrieval

In This Chapter

✓	Steering clear of the Eval method
✓	Attaching to different kinds of data
✓	Advanced Repeater usage

In this chapter, I explore several advanced topics of data retrieval in your ASP.NET programs. Although I tag this section “advanced,” everything is relative. If you’ve mastered the rest of the data-access topics in this mini-book, I strongly encourage you to master these topics as well; they offer some deeper insight into getting the most power out of your data-ready Web sites.

In this chapter, I look at how to bind to different types of data — including your own ArrayList containers — as well as how to skip the somewhat cumbersome SqlDataSource control. I also talk about how to get more out of your Repeater controls (a control I personally find incredibly powerful through its simplicity). I begin the chapter with a discussion of the elusive concept of binding — and a convoluted, but worthwhile, alternative to the Eval method that was presented in Chapter 2 of this mini-book.

All the code listings that are used in this book are available for download at www.dummies.com/go/aspnetaiofd.

Ditching the Eval Method

When you bind to data using the <%# %> tags in a typical .aspx file, you’re making use of a special ASP.NET syntax. Inside these constructs, what you can do is pretty limited. This is a source of a lot of confusion among ASP.NET programmers. ...