How can I hide the jqgrid completely when no data

Question

I'm having a heck of a time trying to only display my jqGrid when records are returned from my webservice. I don't want it to be collapsed to where you only see the caption bar either, but if that's the best I can do, I suppose that I could put a meaningful message into the caption. Still, I'd much rather just hide the grid and show a "No Records Found" message div block.

I also guess that if worst came to worst, I could do the solution on this question How to display information in jqGrid that there are not any data? (link included as alternate possible solution for others).

I've tried doing a .hide() inside of both the function used when loading the data from a function and the GRIDCOMPLETE event, and neither accomplished hiding the grid. I'm pretty new to JQuery, not to mention pretty new to using jqGrid.

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("#list").jqGrid({
        url: 'Service/JQGridTest.asmx/AssetSearchXml',
        datatype: 'xml',
        mtype: 'GET',
        colNames: ['Inv No', 'Date', 'Amount'],
        colModel: [
            { name: 'invid', index: 'invid', width: 55 },
            { name: 'invdate', index: 'invdate', width: 90 },
            { name: 'amount', index: 'amount', width: 80, align: 'right' }],
        pager: jQuery('#pager'),
        postData: { "testvar": "whatever" },
        rowNum: 10,
        rowList: [10, 20, 30],
        sortname: 'id',
        sortorder: "desc",
        viewrecords: true,
        imgpath: 'themes/sand/images',
        caption: 'My first grid',
        gridComplete: function() {
            var recs = $("#list").getGridParam("records");
            if (recs == 0) {
                $("#list").hide();
            }
            else {
                alert('records > 0');
            }
        }
    });

    ...

    <table id="list" class="scroll"></table> 
    <div id="pager" class="scroll" style="text-align:center;"></div> 

And tried this too:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("#list").jqGrid({
        datatype: function(postdata) {
            jQuery.ajax({
                url: 'Service/JQGridTest.asmx/AssetSearchXml',
                data: postdata,
                dataType: "xml",
                complete: function(xmldata, stat) {
                    if (stat == "success") {
                        var thegrid = $("#list")[0];
                        thegrid.addXmlData(xmldata.responseXML);
                        var recs = $("#list").getGridParam("records");

                        if (recs == 0) {
                            $("#list").hide();
                            alert('No rows - grid hidden');
                        }
                        else {
                            alert(recs);
                        }
                    }
                    else {
                        alert('FAIL');
                    }
                }
            });
        },
        mtype: 'GET',
        colNames: ['Inv No', 'Date', 'Amount'],
        colModel: [
            { name: 'invid', index: 'invid', width: 55 },
            { name: 'invdate', index: 'invdate', width: 90 },
            { name: 'amount', index: 'amount', width: 80, align: 'right' }],
        pager: jQuery('#pager'),
        postData: { "testvar": "whatever" },
        rowNum: 10,
        rowList: [10, 20, 30],
        sortname: 'id',
        sortorder: "desc",
        viewrecords: true,
        imgpath: 'themes/sand/images',
        caption: 'My first grid'
    });

    ...

    <table id="list" class="scroll"></table> 
    <div id="pager" class="scroll" style="text-align:center;"></div> 

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Answer 1

Folks, no need to create divs or use CSS. It is natively available using setGridState:

gridComplete: function ()
  {
    var recs = $('#myGrid').jqGrid('getGridParam', 'reccount');

    if (isNaN(recs) || recs == 0)
    {
      $("#myGrid").jqGrid('setGridState', 'hidden');
    }
    else
    {
      $("#myGrid").jqGrid('setGridState', 'visible');
    }
  }

Answer 2

Try using this method to hide jqGrid:

$("#someGridTableName").jqGrid("GridUnload");

Be sure to include:
jquery.jqGrid-x.x.x/src/grid.custom.js file.

See this post that talks more about the above method. Or jqGrid wiki where it talks about this method in the Add on Grid Methods section.

Another point to consider:
Avoid using wrapper (see post) <div> tags on jqGrid to hide it because it's overflow: auto; attribute will not work if you try to make grid columns manually wider and exceed wrapper div's width.
Another words, jqGrid is already equipped with logic to create horizontal scrollbar without help of external divs.

Note: Tested on IE8 & 9