?his is
the third post in a series of posts on how to design and implement an ASP.Net 4.5 Web Forms store that sells posters on line.Make sure you read
the first and second post in
the series.In this new post I will keep making some minor changes in
the Markup,CSS and Master page but there is no point in presenting them here. They are just minor changes to reflect
the content and layout I want my site to have. What I need to do now is to add some more pages and start displaying properly data from my database.Having said that I will show you how to add more pages to
the web application and present data.1) Launch Visual Studio and open your solution where your project lives2) Add a new web form item on
the project.Make sure you include
the Master Page.Name it PosterList.aspxHave a look at
the picture below 3) In Site.Master add
the following link to
the master page so
the user can navigate to it.You should only add
the line in bold <nav> <ul id="menu"> <li><a runat="server" href="~/">Home</a></li> <li><a runat="server" href="~/About.aspx">About</a></li> <li><a runat="server" href="~/Contact.aspx">Contact</a></li> <li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/PosterList.aspx">Posters</a></li> </ul> </nav> 4) Now we need to display categories from
the database. We will use a ListView web server control.Inside
the <div id="body"> add
the following
code. <section id="postercat"> <asp:ListView ID="categoryList" ItemType="PostersOnLine.DAL.PosterCategory" runat="server" SelectMethod="GetPosterCategories" > <ItemTemplate> <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/PosterList.aspx?id=<%#: Item.PosterCategoryID %>"> <%#: Item.PosterCategoryName %> </a> </b> </ItemTemplate> <ItemSeparatorTemplate> ----- </ItemSeparatorTemplate> </asp:ListView> </section> Let me explain what
the code does.We have
the ListView control that displays each poster category's name.It also includes a link to
the PosterList.aspx page with a query-string value containing
the ID of
the category. We set
the ItemType property in
the ListView to
the PosterCategory entity .We set
the SelectMethod property to a method GetPosterCategories. Now we can use
the data-binding expression Item (<%#: %>) that is available within
the ItemTemplate . 5) Now we must write
the GetPosterCategories method. In
the Site.Master.cs file add
the following
code.This is just a simple function that returns
the poster categories. public IQueryable<PosterCategory> GetPosterCategories() { PosterContext ctx = new PosterContext(); IQueryable<PosterCategory> query = ctx.PosterCategories; return query; } 6) I just changed a few things in
the Site.css file to style
the new <section> HTML element that includes
the ListView control.#postercat { text-align: center; background-color: #85C465;} 7) Build and run your application. Everything should compile now. Have a look at
the picture below.
The links (poster categories) appear.?he ListView control when is called during
the page lifecycle calls
the GetPosterCategories() method.
The method is executed and returns
the poster categories that are bound to
the control. When I click on any of
the poster category links,
the PosterList.aspx page will show up with
the appropriate Id that is
the PosterCategoryID.Have a look at
the picture below We will add more data-enabled controls in
the next post in
the PosterList.aspx page. Some people are complaining
the posts are too long so I will keep them short. Hope it helps!!!
