Dynamically insert checkbox into a table in ASP.NET with variable number of fields. C# codebehind

Question

I'm building an exemption request form that populates from an SQL Server 2008 database.

DataRow[] exemption = ds.Tables[2].Select();
    foreach (DataRow dr in exemption)
    {
        string exemptionType = dr["ExemptionType"].ToString();
        string exemptionID = dr["ExemptionID"].ToString();
        string exemptionDesc = dr["ExemptionDescription"].ToString();
        string displayLabel = dr["DisplayLabel"].ToString();
        sb.Append("<table align='center' width='730px'>");
        sb.Append("<tr><td><asp:CheckBox ID=\"chk" + exemptionID + "\" runat=\"server\" /></td>");
        sb.Append("<td><strong>" + exemptionDesc + "</strong></td>");
        sb.Append("</table>");
        sb.Append("<table align='center' width='630px'>");
        sb.Append("<tr><td>" + displayLabel + "</td></tr>");
        sb.Append("</table>");
    }
    return sb.ToString();

As it stands right now, the table builds fine, all the data displays fine, but the checkbox does not show up. Was wondering if doing it this way is possible at all, and if so, what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You're inserting ASP.NET into your HTML and that HTML is probably not getting processed by ASP.NET. If you want to do it the way you're doing it now... switch to using input tags like so...

DataRow[] exemption = ds.Tables[2].Select(); 
foreach (DataRow dr in exemption) 
{ 
  string exemptionType = dr["ExemptionType"].ToString(); 
  string exemptionID = dr["ExemptionID"].ToString(); 
  string exemptionDesc = dr["ExemptionDescription"].ToString(); 
  string displayLabel = dr["DisplayLabel"].ToString(); 
  sb.Append("<table align='center' width='730px'>"); 
  sb.Append("<tr><td><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"chk" + exemptionID + "\" /></td>"); 
  sb.Append("<td><strong>" + exemptionDesc + "</strong></td>"); 
  sb.Append("</table>"); 
  sb.Append("<table align='center' width='630px'>"); 
  sb.Append("<tr><td>" + displayLabel + "</td></tr>"); 
  sb.Append("</table>"); 
} 
return sb.ToString(); 

The other route would be to actually create the ASP.NET Checkboxes. That would look somethig like this...

  var checkbox = new CheckBox();
  checkbox.ID = "chk" + exemptionId;
  wrapper.Controls.Add(checkbox);

Where wrapper is a Panel or something of the sort.