Assign / Update the gridview Checkbox's Checked property value from a datafield that is of non-boolean datatype that is bound to a SQLDataSource.

Introduction

This is bit tricky but possible!!

When you try to assign expected boolean value to Checked property of a chekcbox using Eval or Bind methods in HTML the application throws exception - Specified cast is invalid.

The issue is about achieving Two-way binding with the checkbox!!

Actually we could assign the checked property using different methods eg: one way is to overriding the RowDatabound event of gridview.

Find the checkbox control from the selected gridviewdatarow object and assign the value using either Eval(fieldname) OR Container.DataItem(fieldname) methods.

But I am not sure how we would update this Checked property since the field would become ReadOnly. The SQlDataSource will not update this checkbox's Checked property value.

I know one method that uses less code and is easy. It has 2 steps as follows...

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.
.
<EditItemTemplate>
 <asp:Checkbox = id = "chk1" runat="sever" Checked = '<%# Checkvalue(Eval(fieldname)) %>' />
</EditItemTemplate>
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.
.

Public bool Checkvalue(object obj)
{
if(obj != null)
{
  //Assuming the datafield returns 0s and 1s and we need to transform the values
 //to a boolean datatype.
 return obj.ToString() == 1? true:false; 
}
else
{
 return false;
   
}
}

protected void GridView1_RowUpdating(object sender, GridViewUpdateEventArgs e)
        
{
//Override GridView's RowUpdating event to update the datafield values.
GridViewRow grdvwrw_UPD =((GridView)sender).Rows[e.RowIndex];
   bool value;
value = ((CheckBox)grdvwrw_UPD.Cells[0].FindControl("chk1")).Checked;
if (value == true)
{
   e.NewValues.Add("RESULTS", 1);
}
else
{
   e.NewValues.Add("RESULTS", 0);
}
}

Conclusion

If we could have accessed the Bind method,that implicitly performs two-way binding, in the code-behind then we could have just override the RowDatabound event and assigned the value to the gridview's checkbox control using the Bind method. But unfortunately the Bind is not available in ASP.Net 2.0 instead Eval only is available.

Instead the above code performs the magic of two-way binding for the checkbox.

Please let me know if this has helped anyone solve the problem!!

Thanks,

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