ASP.NET Web Pages - WebGrid helper

WebGrid - one of the many useful ASP.NET Web helpers.

Writing HTML manually

In the previous chapters, we used razor code to display data from the database and wrote all the HTML tags ourselves:

Database instance

@{
var db = Database.Open("SmallBakery"); 
var selectQueryString = "SELECT * FROM Product ORDER BY Name"; 
}
<html> 
<body> 
<h1>Small Bakery Products</h1> 
<table> 
<tr>
<th>Id</th> 
<th>Product</th> 
<th>Description</th> 
<th>Price</th> 
</tr>
@foreach(var row in db.Query(selectQueryString))
{
<tr> 
<td>@row.Id</td> 
<td>@row.Name</td> 
<td>@row.Description</td> 
<td align="right">@row.Price</td> 
</tr> 
}
</table> 
</body> 
</html>

Run Instance

Using WebGrid Helper

Using the WebGrid helper is a simpler way to display data.

WebGrid Helper:

  • Automatically builds an HTML table to display data
  • Supports different formatting options
  • Supports data pagination
  • Supports sorting by clicking on column headers

WebGrid Instance

@{ 
var db = Database.Open("SmallBakery") ; 
var selectQueryString = "SELECT * FROM Product ORDER BY Id"; 
var data = db.Query(selectQueryString); 
var grid = new WebGrid(data); 
}
<html> 
<head> 
<title>Displaying Data Using the WebGrid Helper</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
<h1>Small Bakery Products</h1> 
<div id="grid"> 
@grid.GetHtml()
</div> 
</body> 
</html>

Run Instance