Replacement for invisible columns in the GridView

For security reasons Microsoft doesn’t allow invisible columns in a GridView to be posted back like it does in the old DataGrid. That makes it impossible to store the ID of the row in an invisible column and then use it for editing etc. Instead they introduced a much more powerful way of doing the same thing.

Say hello to the new properties DataKeyNames and DataKeys. They allow you to store more than one column of the data source in the ViewState and thus giving you a much easier approach than dealing with invisible columns. In this code sample, I’ll show you how to store a single field in the grid an then use it on a postback.

When you data bind the GridView, you have to tell it in a single line of code what columns of the data source should be saved during postback. In this case, it’s the “id” column.

private void DataBindGrid()
{
  grid.DataKeyNames = new string[] { "id" };
  grid.DataSource = GetDataTable();
  grid.DataBind();
}

After the postback you can then loop through the rows and extract the value “id” column.

private void LoopRows()
{
  for (int i = 0; i < grid.Controls[0].Controls.Count - 1; i++)
  {
    string key = grid.DataKeys[i].Value.ToString();
    DoSomething(key);
  }
}

You can find more info about how to use the DataKeyNames and DataKeys properties here:

Datagrid to GridView Conversion: No Invisible Columns
gridview column w/visible=false no longer contains cell data in beta 2