Grid DataItem and Anonymous Types

[wdudek]

I have a grid that I am populating using LINQ and an anonymous type, the grid consists of 1 column with a hyperlink and can be populated by one of 2 data sources. Depending on the datasource I need to change the hyperlink and query parameters. I am trying to access the values for the parameters from the e.Item.DataItem, but being that it is an anonymous type, I'm not sure how to get at the values even though I can see them in the debugger. Anyone else come across this?

[Veli]

Hello William,

Can you try casting your e.Item to a GridDataItem first, and then reference the value for a specific column using the column's unique name. The Text property of the TableCell thus referenced should be holding a string representation of your value:

GridDataItem item = (GridDataItem)e.Item;
string cellValue = item["ColumnUniqueName"].Text;

All the best,
Veli
the Telerik team

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[Shinu]

Hello William,

You can also go through the following help article.
Accessing cells and rows

Thanks
Shinu.

[wdudek]

Hi, 
    My problem isn't accessing the data in the cells, I can get at the hyperlink column and at the data item that would be supplying it. My problem was that in the code behind I was trying to extract values from the data item, but because it is an anonymous type I don't know what to cast it to to get the data out of it. It's more related to LINQ than to Telerik, but I was wondering if anyone here had solved the same problem already?

[Nikolay Rusev]

Hello wdudek,

Thank you for contacting us.

If I understand you correctly your scenario is similar to the following:

RadGrid bound to collection of

select new
{
 //property
 Name = "some value",
 //property
 Thread = "some value"
};

and you are trying to extract the data of Name property on some event of the grid ex. ItemDataBound.
Here you have the DataItem:

var _item = e.Item.DataItem;

You have two options:

Type _t = (_item.GetType().GetProperty("Name").PropertyType);
object name = Convert.ChangeType(DataBinder.Eval(_item, "Name"), _t);

OR

var name = DataBinder.Eval(_item, "Name");

Unfortunately as you can see there is no way to cast to the type of that property.

Greetings,
Nikolay
the Telerik team

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[wdudek]

That is exactly my situation. Thanks!! My work around was to create a struct and populate the struct with the results from LINQ instead of using the anonymous type, but this seemed kind of excessive to populate the simple data I was collecting. For the page I am working on your example will make my code allot cleaner.

Thanks

Bill

[Juan Angel]

My problem is very similiar:

I Have an anonymous type in Grid Datasource, like this

var expedientes = (from exp in tuc.EXPEDIENTE
           select new { exp.ID_EXPEDIENTE, exp.DSC_EXPEDIENTE,
, ENTRADAs = (from et in tuc.ENTRADA_TUC where et.ID_EXPEDIENTE == exp.ID_EXPEDIENTE select et.ID_ENTRADA)
                                             }
                                            ).ToList();

I Have 2 entities (tables) EXPEDIENTE and ENTRADA. I obtain objects of EXPEDIENTE and related objects of ENTRADA. The propety ENTRADAs is a collection of ENTRADA.

I use this code:

Type _t = e.Item.DataItem.GetType().GetProperty("ENTRADA").PropertyType;
object obj = Convert.ChangeType(e.Item.DataItem, _t);

the first line it's ok, but Convert.ChangeType throw an System.InvalidCastException: Object must impletent IConvertible.

I need access to property ENTRADA and its elements.

Thanks.

[p]

Try

DataBinder.Eval(e.Item.DataItem, "PropertyName")

It worked for me.

Source:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470907/access-columns-in-itemdatabound-event-when-the-datasource-is-linq