Using the ASP.NET Repeater Control

[ArticleBot]

This is an article discussion thread for discussing the SitePoint article, "Using the ASP.NET Repeater Control"

[cringer]

Repeaters are cool, no doubt, as are datagrids and datalists.
Databinding in .NET is a real pleasure, Makes life easy compared to procedural scripting languages such as PHP or old classic ASP.

But this bit I really don't understand:

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
SqlConnection conDotNet = new SqlConnection
"Server=xxxxxxx;UID=xxxx;PWD=xxxxx;Database=DotNetGenius");
string sSQL = "Select sub_category_id, sub_category_text
from Sub_Category";
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(sSQL, conDotNet);
conDotNet.Open();
SqlDataReader dtrCat = cmd.ExecuteReader();
catlist.DataSource = dtrCat;
catlist.DataBind();
}

Your'e exposing your database connection object through every single page? Wouldn't you want to centralize and reuse that object in a class for reasons I shouldn't have to review here?

Also if using MS-SQL Server... why wouldn't you use functions that call stored procedures and return an sqldatareader (as part of the database class), instead of sending raw SQL strings from random pages to the database?

Maybe I'm nitpicking and maybe you illustrated in this way for simplicity's sake. But to me that's just bad practice.

[pufa]

Instead of :
NavigateUrl='<%# "mainframeset.aspx?CatType=" + DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"Sub_Category_ID")%>"

You can use another overload of DataBinder.Eval

<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Sub_Category_ID", "mainframeset.aspx?CaType={0}") %>, much cleaner.

{0}, gets replacled with the value of "Sub_Category_ID", and DataBinder.Eval returns

mainframeset.aspx?CatType=Sub_Category_ID_Value