Using Button columns in GridView

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GridView control is one of the most powerful controls in ASP.NET 2.0. This control displays database records in typical tabular form, and provides features such as Sorting, Paging, Selection and Editing without writing a single line of code. It also has many different types of fields (columns) such as hyperlinks, images, checkboxes etc.

In the following tutorial, I will show you different techniques you can use to display command buttons in GridView.  For this tutorial I am using Microsoft famous sample database Northwind. I am displaying Products table in the GridView. Also make sure you are setting GridView DataKeyFields property to the Primary Key column of the Product Table such as ProductID. GridView control RowCommand event will give you the ProductID of the product from the GridView Rows when user will click any of the button in the GridView.

Here is the code of GridView control.

<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false" 
   BorderColor="#336699" BorderStyle="Solid" BorderWidth="2px" 
   CellPadding="4" DataKeyNames="ProductID"
   DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" ForeColor="#333333">
                
   <Columns>

      <asp:BoundField DataField="ProductID"  HeaderText="ProductID" 
         SortExpression="ProductID" />

      <asp:ButtonField ButtonType="link" CommandName="ProductName" 
         DataTextField="ProductName" HeaderText="Name" 
         SortExpression="ProductName" />

      <asp:ButtonField ButtonType="button" CommandName="MoreDetail" 
         HeaderText="More Details" Text="More Details" />

      <asp:ButtonField ButtonType="Link" CommandName="ViewCategory" 
         HeaderText="View Category" Text="View Category" />

      <asp:ButtonField ButtonType="Image" CommandName="BuyNow" 
         HeaderText="Buy Now" ImageUrl="buynow.gif" />

      <asp:ButtonField DataTextField="UnitsInStock" HeaderText="Stock" 
         ButtonType="button" DataTextFormatString="{0} Items" 
         CommandName="Stock" />                        

   </Columns>
                
</asp:GridView>

To handle click event of the buttons in GridView you need to handle RowCommand event of the GridView control. Following code will show you how you can get RowIndexProductID and CommandName of the button when user click any button in the GridView.

VB.NET

Protected Sub GridView1_RowCommand(ByVal sender As Object, 
   ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewCommandEventArgs) 
   Handles GridView1.RowCommand
   
   Dim currentCommand As String = e.CommandName
   Dim currentRowIndex As Integer = Int32.Parse(e.CommandArgument.ToString())
   Dim ProductID As String = GridView1.DataKeys(currentRowIndex).Value    
   
   Label1.Text = "Command: " & currentCommand
   Label2.Text = "Row Index: " & currentRowIndex.ToString
   Label3.Text = "Product ID: " & ProductID
End Sub

C#

protected void GridView1_RowCommand(object sender, 
   System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewCommandEventArgs e) 
{     
   string currentCommand = e.CommandName; 
   int currentRowIndex = Int32.Parse(e.CommandArgument.ToString()); 
   string ProductID = GridView1.DataKeys[currentRowIndex].Value; 
    
   Label1.Text = "Command: " + currentCommand; 
   Label2.Text = "Row Index: " + currentRowIndex.ToString; 
   Label3.Text = "Product ID: " + ProductID;     
}
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This Post Has 33 Comments

  1. yikhun1234

    for information. Can add a OnRowCommand on asp:gridview link with GridView1_RowCommand is work on VS2012.
    Thx admin giving this info.

  2. Martin

    Thanks a lot! Very useful.
    Martin

  3. raji

    Nice..very useful…..is t possible to update the values of particular cell in a grid by a butoon click ??????
    ex: gridview1.rows[2].cells[2] value sholud be decrementd for every button click ….

  4. J_man

    many thanks, works perfect, best code ever.

  5. Fatma

    Thanks :)) this was realy Simple & useful

  6. Lansirana

    Unbelivable, spent two days trying to figure this out. Thank you very much! You have solved my 2012 .NET 4 problem with a solution from 2008 .NET 2. 🙂

  7. Stefi

    Thank you so much! This has been extremely helpful! 🙂

  8. Nisha

    Thanks, this helped me 🙂

  9. Rajesh

    Thanks……………
    Informaticz
    Software Company Thrissur

  10. Atur

    thanks dude,you got simple tutorial and its very good.:D

  11. Sunil Chauhan

    Thanks a lot. This page helped me a lot to complete my project.

  12. david menke

    I see how to get a grid view to display the buttons in a column. Now how do you get the those buttons to display data when clicked?

    I am trying to fill a 2nd grid view using input parameters including data from the 1st grid view rows using a stored procedure when the button in that row is clicked. Please help.

    1. Waqas Anwar

      Hi david menke

      In this tutorial, you can see how to do that using RowCommand event. Once you get product id you can get records related to that product id and display records on second grid.

  13. loft conversion london

    very helpful tutorial, thanks for the tutorial.

  14. Rajeev

    Sir Thank You Very Much for great tutorial

  15. Faisal Naseer

    what is lablel1, label2, label3, please help…

    1. Waqas Anwar

      Label1, Label2 and Label3 are simple ASP.NET Label controls.

  16. Abhilash

    this is really a good site

  17. Atul

    Clean, Precise and good code.

  18. hw

    thanks! it was extremely useful

  19. jasmin

    Thank u

  20. Yogi

    Thanks. It was very helpful. After correcting syntax errors, it worked perfectly fine. Thanks again.

  21. timber24

    what about delete event?

  22. Barbara

    Presented simply and works!!

  23. Steve

    Nice, thanks. You would not believe how many over-complicated solutions to this problem show up in Google before you get to this perfectly straightforward one!

  24. Rebecca

    By the way, im using image button to select the id. Is there a way to click on the imagebutton to retreive the same result as yours without me selecting ont the ‘select’ button?

  25. Rebecca

    Hi it works only for my first page, as there are many pages in my gridview so when i click on the others pages it show:

    Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
    Parameter name: index

    Please help.

  26. simone

    thanks a lot – you have helped me fix a problem that was buggin me!

  27. oscar andres

    Excelent, symple and easy

  28. Siraj

    Thanks boss it was very useful

  29. navya

    Everything is perfect except for the usage of ( ) insted of [ ] for the rowindex

  30. Rawad

    The code did not work.. It had some syntax mistakes(The c# one).
    I fixed the syntax mistakes and it didnt work still.
    The most important thing for me is to get the index of the row on which the button was clicked.
    please try to reply.

    1. Waqas Anwar

      Hi

      You make sure that DataKeyFields property is set as the primary key column of your datasource.

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