GridView trouble in .Net

Question

i think this maybe an easy one...
I have a Gridview, bound to a dataSource with this query:
select userid, name, phone from users
I need to change the content of the Name cell to a link, like so:
<a href="http://www.domain.com/page.aspx?userid=12345">User's Name</a>
so OnRowDataBound i'm doing this:

e.Row.Cells[1].Text = "<a href=\"http://www.domain.com/page.aspx?userid=\" + e.Row.Cell[0].Text + "\">" + e.Row.Cells[1].Text + "</a>"; 

It all works fine this way. My problem is that i don't want to display the UserId column in the Gridview, but when i attribute it (asp attribute or server-side) Visible="false" to the BoundField UserId, i can't capture it's value to build the Name Cell.

Thanx for your help

Answer 1

Make your gridView to use template items instead of simple grivdiew column.

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="FirstName" SortExpression="FirstName"> 
  <EditItemTemplate> 
      <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("FirstName")%>'>
      </asp:TextBox> 
      </EditItemTemplate> 
   <ItemTemplate> 
      <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("FirstName") %>'>
     </asp:Label> 
 </ItemTemplate> 
</asp:TemplateField>

You can find a nice intro Here

Answer 2

you can set the visibility on the onrowdatabound event

Answer 3

Agree with Jani, this should be done with a template field. If you really need to do it the other way, see Can data be kept in a dynamically bound GridView's invisible fields?.