Replace checkboxes in Dynamic Data with gridview

Question

As you know when you have a lot of elements in a database table and you also have a relationship between this table and another (let's say many-to-many) , when you are trying to insert a new item in Dynamic Data, for the foreign key option you have a lot of checkboxes you can check.

For example, if you have Category and Products and you want to insert a new Category you will have something like this:

 Product1    Product2   Product3   Product4
 Product5    Product6   ...

When you have few products it looks good, but when you have over 50 000 it doesn't.

How can I replace them with a grid view ( where I load product entities ) having a checkbox before every product name. If I check that checkbox it means I want to add that product to this category (that I'm creating in this moment ).

Hope you understand what I am trying to say. I'm thinking to make a custom field ( or a custom page with custom field ) but I don't know how to make that grid view.

Thank you

Answer 1

How about you make a Gridview:

    <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvMyGrid">
         <Columns>
            <asp:BoundField DataField="MyField" HeaderText="HeaderForMyField />
            ... You have a few of these 
             <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Products">
                  <ItemTemplate>
                         <asp:Repeater runat="server" id="rptListOfProducts" OnItemDataBound="ProductsDataBound">
                             <ItemTemplate>
                                  <asp:HiddenField id="hfProductId" runat="server"
                                        Value='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "ProductId") %>'/>
                                  <asp:CheckBox id="cbProduct" runat="Server" 
                                      Text='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "ProductName") %>'
                                      Checked='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "IsThisProductSelected") %>' />  //Or some kind of flag that is true or false
                             </ItemTemplate>
                         </asp:Repeater>
                  </ItemTemplate>
         </Columns>
    </asp:GridView>

Then in your C# code you can something like this to find out what the user changed.

    foreach (Control c in rptMonitors.Items)
    {
             var productId = int.Parse(((HiddenField)c.FindControl("hfProductId")).Value);
             //And get the check box too, generate a list of ProductIds, and if they're checked or not
    }

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, the description was a little vague

Edit: Oh and if you're expecting loads of entries in the Repeater, you could wrap it in an AjaxControlToolkit Collapsible Panel, so it doesn't spam up your screen.