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Data Binding Overview

RadTabStrip supports binding to various types of data sources:

To bind the tab strip to a data source, specify the data source as the value of the DataSource property and call the DataBind method. If you are using declarative data sources such as AccessDataSource or SiteMapDataSource, use the DataSourceID property instead of the DataSource property.

Usually, you also want to do one or more of the following:

  1. Set Text, Value or NavigateUrl properties using:

  2. DataTextField - specifies the field of the data source that provides the Text of the tabs. If this field does not contain string values, you can use the DataTextFormatString property to ensure that field values are formatted the way you want

  3. DataValueField - Specifies the field of the data source that provides the Value of the tabs

  4. DataNavigateUrlField - Specifies the field of the data source that provides the NavigateUrl of the tabs

  5. If the data source is not hierarchical, you can establish the hierarchy through an ID to ParentID relationship using:

  6. DataFieldID - The name of the field in the data source that acts as a key, uniquely identifying rows.

  7. DataFieldParentID - The name of the field in the data source that identifies the key field value of the parent tab. The value of this field for root items should be null(table- or object-based data source) or the default value of the corresponding value type used (object-based data source).

  8. If the data source contains fields that map to other properties of tabs or to custom attributes, use the TabDataBound event to set those values:

void RadTabStrip1_TabDataBound(object sender, RadTabStripEventArgs e)
{
   e.Tab.ToolTip = "Read more about" + (string)DataBinder.Eval(e.Tab.DataItem, "Text");  
}               
Private Sub RadTabStrip1_TabDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As RadTabStripEventArgs)
    e.Tab.ToolTip = "Read more about" + DirectCast(DataBinder.Eval(e.Tab.DataItem, "Text"), String)
End Sub                 
  1. As an alternative to using the TabDataBound event handler, you can use DataBindings to declaratively map fields from the data source to properties of the tabs. The DataBindings collection also lets you map fields differently, based on the level of tabs.

Hierarchical data

Tab strips can be hierarchical in structure. That is, they contain child tabs that are accessed through parent tabs. RadTabStrip reconstructs this hierarchy differently, depending on the type of data source:

  1. For inherently hierarchical data sources, RadTabStrip will automatically create the tab hierarchy. Such data sources include

  • XmlDataSource

  • SiteMapDataSource

  1. For table-structured data sources, RadTabStrip uses the ID to ParentID relationship to establish a hierarchy. Such data sources include

  • DataSet, DataTable, and DataView

  • SqlDataSource

  • AccessDataSource

  1. For object-based data sources, RadTabStrip uses the ID to ParentID relationship to establish a hierarchy. Such data sources include

  • ObjectDataSource

  • LinqDataSource

  • Any class that implements the IEnumerable interface such as List, Array, ArrayList, etc.

Appending Data Bound Items

RadTabStrip exposes the AppendDataBoundItems property (False by default). If you bind the tab strip using the DataBind method, all tabs are automatically cleared.

Setting AppendDataBoundItems to True preserves the tabs that are already present in the tab strip. This lets you bind RadTabStrip to multiple data sources or use both unbound and bound modes.

Binding depth

RadTabStrip exposes the MaxDataBindDepth property. This property is used to determine the binding depth. If for example you want to bind only the first two levels of the tab strip, you should set this property to 2. The default value of the MaxDataBindDepth property is -1, which means that all tabs will be bound. Marking the tab strip instance with MaxDataBindDepth="0" will NOT bind any tabs.

Using Templates with Data-bound Items

You can use templates with a data-bound tab strip. To bind template tabs to column values, use DataBinder.Eval expressions in the template's definition:

<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "ColumnName") %>                

Note that you use Container.DataItem to access the tab when it is in a bound mode. The tab must already be bound before template binding can work.

For live examples of data-binding RadTabStrip, see Declarative Data Sources and Hierarchical Data Binding.

See Also

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