Showing gridview when no records present

Here is an easy solution to get a GridView to show headers when there are no records to show.

Code snippet:

DataTable dt = getResults(); //getResults would query your datasource and return a datatable

if (dt.Rows.Count > 0)
{
GridView1.DataSource = dt;
GridView1.Databind();
}
else //part that generates the Gridview with headers only
{
dt.Rows.Add(); //adds blank row to table
GridView1.DataSource = dt;
GridView1.DataBind();
GridView1.Rows[0].Visible = false; //makes blank row invisible
GridView1.Rows[0].Controls.Clear(); //removes any controls for row
}

Custom Link Buttons In Gridview

There have been times in my job, where a customized link button in a gridview was needed. While there are probably several ways to do this, the following is the best way to do it that I have found. In my case, I needed the link button to change text, and also change command name, based off of data from a query.

What I did was when creating the binding of the datasource to the gridview in codebehind, I added a datakey that I wanted to key off of.

gv.DataKeyNames = new string[] { "excluded" };

Then in the RowDataBound event, I have the following code within it. Basically it looks at the value I'm keying off of, and if it is a 1, then does one routine, else it does another. In the routine, it gets the LinkButton control from the cell, and then sets the text, forecolor, and command name.

if (Convert.ToString(gvEvents.DataKeys[e.Row.RowIndex].Values["excluded"].ToString()) == "1")
{
LinkButton lb = (LinkButton)e.Row.Cells[10].Controls[0];
lb.Text = "Include";
lb.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Black;
lb.CommandName = "include";
}
else
{
LinkButton lb = (LinkButton)e.Row.Cells[10].Controls[0];
lb.Text = "Exclude";
lb.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Black;
lb.CommandName = "exclude";
}