Webgrid and formatting DateTime value when grid columns are built in model

Question

I am creating a collection of WebGridColumns, adding them to my model and passing that to my razor page. I am doing this because there are a variable number of columns that are determined on the fly. This works well, but now I need to format datetime values to short date and am not sure how this can be accomplished when creating the collection of webgridcolumns.

 foreach (var datetimeitem in cols)
            {                    
                columns.Add(new WebGridColumn
                {   
                    ColumnName = datetimeitem,
                    Header = "MyHeader",
                    Format = **format item here**;

                });
            }

Any ideas?

J

Answer 1

Does your setup look something like this?

@{
    var cols = new[] { "FirstDate", "SecondDate" };
    var columns = new List<WebGridColumn>();

    var grid = new WebGrid(new[]
    {
        new Entity { FirstDate = DateTime.Now, SecondDate = DateTime.Now },
        new Entity { FirstDate = DateTime.MinValue, SecondDate = DateTime.MinValue }
    });
}

If so, you can try

@foreach (var datetimeitem in cols)
{                    
    columns.Add(new WebGridColumn
    {   
        ColumnName = datetimeitem,
        Header = "MyHeader",
        // If item is already a date time
        Format = m => m[datetimeitem].ToShortDateString()
        // If you need to parse item as date time first
        // Format = m => DateTime.Parse(m[datetimeitem]).ToShortDateString()
    });
}

@grid.GetHtml(columns: columns)