GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates

October 29, 2006 @ 2:29 am- from Maui, Hawaii

More in the line of stupid pet tricks: I keep running into this particular issue from time to time and promptly forget the solution, so I’m blogging it again for my own sanity.

If you use GridView and you have a BoundField column in you might run code like this to format a date string:

<asp:BoundField DataField="OrderDate" DataFormatString="{0:d}" HeaderText="Date"

meta:resourcekey="BoundField">

<headerstyle font-italic="False" font-overline="False" font-strikeout="False"

font-underline="False" horizontalalign="Center" width="200px"/>

</asp:BoundField>

The {0:d} is supposed to format the date as a short date string. Instead if you run this you’ll get the default time string.

To make this work you have to add:

<asp:BoundField DataField="OrderDate" DataFormatString="{0:d}" HeaderText="Date"

meta:resourcekey="BoundField"

HtmlEncode="false">

<headerstyle font-italic="False" font-overline="False" font-strikeout="False"

font-underline="False" horizontalalign="Center" width="200px"/>

</asp:BoundField>

Real intuitive ain’t it?

According to MSDN:

Note

When the HtmlEncode property is true, the value of the field is HTML encoded to its string representation before the formatting string is applied. For some objects, such as dates, you might want to control how the object is displayed with a formatting string. In those cases, you must set the HtmlEncode property to false.

Cute.

Anyway, the fix is easy enough once you know what you’re looking for.

Until next time when I get to it 3 months from now and I will have forgotten this unobvious piece of trivia.

Posted in ASP.NET

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DotNetSlackers: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by DotNetSlackers Latest ASP.NET News October 29, 2006 @ 7:37 am

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by AsbjornM October 29, 2006 @ 1:14 pm

Yes, this is plain stupid.. I ran into this issue for some time ago, trying to get currency formatting on data, same there.
I think MS said it was due to some security issues.. I think it is an bug.. :), it is okay when this apply to textfields from databases to avoid various issues, but to numbers, dates, etc??

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by John Walker October 29, 2006 @ 9:29 pm

Yes, I actually submitted this behavior as a bug during the betas of VS 2005. Of course, my submission was marked as a feature and not a bug, but I don't buy it. Silly, but at least we know the solution.

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Marc Brooks October 29, 2006 @ 10:37 pm

I've long ago stopped using bare BoundFields in my GridViews. If you want to really make sure you never make this mistake again, just start building a library of common BoundField derivatives that automate the FormatString and fix all the issues like this. I've gone even farther and added the automatic insertion of Validators that insure correct datatype, range, required, etc. using a much simplified set attributes on the bound fields. Now, when I want an integer field between 0 and 255 (say the green pixel value for 24bpp), my mark-up is:

&lt;phydeaux:IntegerField runat="server" ID="green" MinimumValue="0" MaximumValue="255" /&gt;

I've got versions for all the common input types I see, Boolean, Currency, DateTime, Date, Time, Decimal, Double, Integer, DropDown, ListBox, Memo, Text. They all support required validation (with autogenerated localized messages or hard coded messages) and expose CssClass based styling. The numeric and Date/Time/DateTime all support min/max range checking and type validation, plus supply the correct formatting string. The Text and Memo support min/max length checking and Text supports RegEx validators. Finally the DropDown and ListBox support sub-data binding.

The moral is, I don't repeat myself in markup and support code. I write BoundField derived classes that "just work" and use those. If there's any interest, I can blog about the code and post on CodePlex.

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Marc Brooks October 29, 2006 @ 10:43 pm

I forgot to mention... the easy way to make the HtmlEncoding never bite you on such derivatives of BoundField is adding this method override:

/// <summary>Gets a Boolean value indicating whether the control supports HTML encoding.</summary>
/// <returns>false in all cases.</returns>
protected override bool SupportsHtmlEncode
{
   get { return false; }
}

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Steve from Pleasant Hill October 31, 2006 @ 4:32 pm

Marc, interesting. Yes, please share.

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Michael Shorten December 08, 2006 @ 9:20 am

Thank you! You were the first resource I hit when I did a search on Google to solve this very problem. Good Karma to you for blogging this!

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Mike December 30, 2006 @ 2:12 pm

Likewise, thanks for the timely article. I certainly was stumped.

A Continuous Learner's Weblog: October 2006
by A Continuous Learner's Weblog January 12, 2007 @ 8:14 am

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Alex Rystrom February 06, 2007 @ 9:31 am

I'd love to see an article on this. Mark did you ever create it?

I'm actually struggling, thinking that I can make a single class from boundfield that can automatically figure out the datatype and automatically add validators, maxlengths, etc. based on the datatype.

A Continuous Learner's Weblog
by A Continuous Learner's Weblog February 12, 2007 @ 11:15 am

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Shashank February 14, 2007 @ 11:22 am

Yes Sure, its intuitive. Thanks for blogging

re: GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
by Mehul August 03, 2007 @ 12:05 am

Good,

It helped me to save space in my Gridview..

Thanks