Since I can't edit my post (it keeps throwing an XSLT error) here's something I wanted to add:

I'm wondering if I'm going about this whole thing the wrong way, and there's some way to sort the member list using the businesslogic API prior to binding it as a DataSource to the ListView?

Hi Joey,

apparently you are responsible for sorting the data and re-binding it to the control if you bind the datasource manually in your code. Maybe this will help if you haven't found it already: http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/011608-1.aspx

Let me know how it goes.

Sascha

Thanks Sascha. That is one of the many articles I have found regarding sorting a ListView.

I take it the section Creating an Event Handler for the ListView's Sorting Event is what I'm supposed to be following, but they don't have any example C# code that I can reference, even in the demo I downloaded from that page. And they don't talk specifically about sorting the listview after it's been binded (they keep going back to talking about buttons).

I already have a PreRender event handler on the listview that binds the Members. Not sure how I can dove tail this Sorting event handler to it.

Grr, thought it might solve it. I've set up a small sample project myself with the list view, funnily enough when it comes to calling the sorting event handler everythings seems to be in order ('LoginName' set as sort expression, order descending set), yet nothing happens. That's why I somehow think you'd need to add some kind of comparer so it knows how to sort (hope you know what I mean).

Anyway, in terms of finding another solution: would it also be acceptable for you to sort the items before binding them to the list view? Do you need the sorting functionality afterwards for the user? If the user can't sort the list and you just use it to display then it seems a lot of work now (unfortunately) to get the sort on render of list view to work. I'll have a bit of a play myself.

Sascha

Hi Joey,

I ended up doing the following now:

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="MemberList.ascx.cs" Inherits="MembersListView.MemberList" %>


        

            ===============

            

            ===============

and in the code-behind:

       protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (!IsPostBack)
            {
                BindMembers(SortDirection.Descending);
            }
        }

        private void BindMembers(SortDirection direction)
        {
            var allMembers = Member.GetAll;
            switch (direction)
            {
                case SortDirection.Ascending:
                    Array.Sort(allMembers, delegate(Member m1, Member m2) { return m1.LoginName.CompareTo(m2.LoginName); });
                    break;
                case SortDirection.Descending:
                    Array.Sort(allMembers, delegate(Member m1, Member m2) { return m2.LoginName.CompareTo(m1.LoginName); });
                    break;
            }

            lvAllMembers.DataSource = allMembers;
            lvAllMembers.DataBind();
        }

        protected void lvAllMembers_Sorting(object sender, ListViewSortEventArgs e)
        {
            BindMembers(e.SortDirection);
        }

        protected void btnSort_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            SortDirection direction = SortDirection.Ascending;
            if (ddlDirection.SelectedValue == "2")
                direction = SortDirection.Descending;

            lvAllMembers.Sort("LoginName", direction);
        }

This is just a quick mock-up and no beautiful code, most importantly you would need to cache the members array so you don't have to call Member.GetAll all the time.

Give it a go and let me know please.

Sascha

Ah hah! Success!

All I needed was one line of your code

public static void GetAllMembersList(ListView lvAllMembers)
{
    var allMembers = Member.GetAll;
    Array.Sort(allMembers, delegate(Member m1, Member m2) { return m1.LoginName.CompareTo(m2.LoginName); });
    lvAllMembers.DataSource = allMembers;
    lvAllMembers.DataBind();
}

To answer your question, yes it is most definitely acceptable to sort the order before binding. There are no buttons on the page that control the sorting. I just wanted it to sort on page load and nothing else.

I'm not too familiar with the Array datatype, so I didn't know about its sorting capabilities. Not sure if this method is resource-intensive, but even if it is, there's less than 300 members so I'm not really worried about it.

Thank you so much! I can put 6 hours of frustration behind me.

Fantastic news, glad it worked out in the end. :)

Cheers,
Sascha

is it just me, or are you not familiar with Linq? You should be able to do this perfectly

var allMembers = Member.GetAll.Sort(m => m.LoginName);

or

var allMembers = Member.GetAll.Cast<Member>().Sort(m => m.LoginName);

lvAllMembers.DataSource = allMembers;
lvAllMembers.DataBind();

I haven't trained myself in LINQ, so I'm not yet aware of its capabilities. I'll have to look into that. Thanks for mentioning it.

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