Who actually uses DataGrid/GridView/FormView/etc i

Question

Curious if others feel the same as me. To me, controls such as datagrid/gridview/formview/etc. are great for presentations or demo's only. To take the time and tweak this controls, override their default behavior (hooking into their silly events etc.) is a big headache. The only control that I use is the repeater, since it offers me the most flexibility over the others.

In short, they are pretty much bloatware.

I'd rather weave my own html/css, use my own custom paging queries.

Again, if you need to throw up a quick page these controls are great (especially if you are trying to woo people into the ease of .NET development).

I must be in the minority, otherwise MS wouldn't dedicated so much development time on these types of controls... ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Answer 1

I use them extensively in the corporate environment I work in and I'm working with one right now. The people who don't use them remind me of all those "I built it with Notepad" developers of years past. What's the point of using asp.net if you're not going to take advantage of the time savings?

Answer 2

Using controls like the GridView are great for simple apps. Even if you are a server-side HTML bracket-twiddling ninja, they can make developing simple stuff much less time consuming. The problem is that they usually start to expose their shortcomings eventually, and you end up having to spend time tweaking them anyway. But at least you can get up and going quickly to start out with.

For example, the default paging in a GridView doesn't support paging in the database itself (you have to load all the rows before it will page them), so once you start feeling that pinch in performance, you may need to think about rolling your own or, perhaps better, find a more capable grid control.

Anyway, the point is that pre-built components are good. They help. But as usual, it depends on what you need them to do.

Answer 3

At my company we use grids everywhere, mostly ComponentArt Grid (http://www.componentart.com/). Yeah it's bloatware but you get a lot of functionality that wouldn't be much fun to re-invent: sorting, paging, grouping, column reordering, inline editing, templating (server-side and client-side). The client-side APIs are nice too.

Answer 4

Components like the GridView/FormView/DataGrid follow the 80/20 rule.

This means that 80% of the time when you use them for simple purposes they get the job done and are extremely easy to implement.

But 20% of the time you will be trying to build something complex (or weird) and you will be forced to jump through a dozen hoops and bend the code in many ways to try to implement a solution.

The trick is to learn whether the problem is an 80 problem or 20 problem, if you can identify the 20 problem early you are much better off writing the code from scratch yourself and ditching the "time saving" one.

Answer 5

Just reading your posts. I agree PHP is easier than asp. but I just started using visual studio for formviews and gridviews. Can not get much easier for either vb or C# programmers. ASP still has problems uploading large files. PHP it's a snap. I run PHP under IIS 7.5

Answer 6

i am a moderate level developer i can say without these controls i couldn,t ever learn developing.just you have to admit yourself to it for a while till you find your way to customize it and the end result will be great