Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB

14.5. Summary

This chapter covered some of the more advanced topics on presenting data with the data controls that previous chapters deliberately skipped to allow you to focus on the core data access concepts. Now that you have a good understanding of data access in general, SQL, LINQ, the data-bound controls, and the various data controls like the SqlDataSource and LinqDataSource controls, it's much easier to see how you can modify the looks and behavior of your controls.

The chapter started off with a good look at the numerous style elements that most data-bound controls have. You learned how to configure styles such as RowStyle and AlternatingRowStyle to create a zebra effect on data-bound controls like the GridView. You also saw how you can use styles such as EditItemStyle, HeaderStyle, and FooterStyle to change the different areas in your data controls.

Although styling information is often applied to all rows in a data control at once, there are situations where you need to change the appearance of individual items in the control conditionally. You saw an example that used the RowDataBound event to change the background and text color of reviews that are currently unauthorized for publication. You also saw how to enable or disable the delete link for the genres GridView to stop users from deleting genres that still have reviews connected to them.

To help you understand the various events that you have at your disposal and the order in which those events fire, you followed ...