Section 9.6. Repeater Control

9.6. Repeater Control

There is one other major player in the game of displaying data: the Repeater Control. The most frequently asked question is which control to use at any given time. Table 9-6 summarizes the differences.

Table 9-6. Comparing Repeater DataList and GridView controls

Feature	Repeater	DataList	GridView
Table layout	No	No	Yes
Flow layout	Yes	Yes	No
Column layout	No	Yes	No
Style properties	No	Yes	Yes
Templates	Yes	Yes	Columns/optional
Select/ Edit/Delete	No	Yes	Yes
Sort	No	No	Yes
Paging	No	No	Yes

The Repeater provides a subset of the DataList and is typically used only when you do not want a column layout.

The Repeater control is "lookless"--that is, there is no predetermined look for the control; you determine how it will appear by adding templates. The potential templates are shown in Table 9-7.

Table 9-7. Repeater Control templates

Template	Description
AlternatingItemTemplate	Used as you would the item template; however, the alternating item is rendered for every other row in the control.
FooterTemplate	Elements to render after all items and other templates have been rendered.
HeaderTemplate	Elements to render before any other templates are rendered.
ItemTemplate	Elements rendered once for each row in the data source.
SeparatorTemplate	Elements to render between each row in the data source.

To get started, add a page to WebNorthWindDataControls named RepeaterDemo.aspx . Drag a Repeater control onto the page from the Data tab in the toolbox. The smart tag opens and asks you to choose (or create) a new data source. This process is identical to the one you did for DataLists ( name this datasource RepeaterCustomerDataSource ).

The Repeater does not have a default appearance; you control it entirely with the templates, which are, essentially , snippets of HTML and .NET Server Controls listed within Template elements:

 <asp:Repeater id="Repeater1" runat="server" DataSource="<%# RepeaterCustomerDataSource %>">    <ItemTemplate>       <asp:Label id=Label1 runat="server"          Customer='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container, "DataItem.Name")%>'>       </asp:Label>    </ItemTemplate>    <SeparatorTemplate>, </SeparatorTemplate> </asp:Repeater>