Data Binding

RadRating's Items collection can be populated with data from a given data source. You can either specify the data source with the ID of the respective DataSource control via the DataSourceID property or pass the data to the DataSource property from the code-behind.

To control the data binding you should use the inner property ItemBinding which provides the following properties:

• TextField - determines which field of the data source will be displayed as text of the item.

• ToolTipField - determines which field of the data source will be displayed as tooltip of the item.

• ValueField - determines which field of the data source will provide the value associated with the item.

In addition, you can also include the databound items to already declared items by setting AppendDataBoundItems="true".

Database-friendly Value setting

The RadRating control provides DbValue property for setting a value in a database-friendly way. By default the RadRating accepts values of type decimal. If a value of incompatible type, for example string, is passed to the Value property of the control, this will result in exception. In such cases the property DbValue can be used, instead of Value. It converts the passed value to a type that can be used by the RadRating, so that you can avoid problems caused by setting incorrect type.

The online demo Data Binding contains useful examples, showing the most common scenarios that will be encountered when databinding a RadRating control.