GridView Sorting without losing user modifications

Question

I have a bit of a unique problem. I am using a GridView to display information from a database. The requirements for this GridView are that it is always editable so I have TextBoxes in the ItemTemplates and want to save the values when a button is clicked.

That all works great.

The problem is I am trying to get sorting (and eventually paging) working and hitting problems. If I bind the GridView from an ObjectDataSource this obviously doesn't work because it rebinds the datasource before it sorts and I lose any modified values. If I bind the GridView from a DataTable and try to store it in a Session variable it still doesn't work because any modified values aren't in the session variable.

I'm really just looking for suggestions on what I could possibly do to sort (and page later) without losing values the user has modified. I realize most people don't modify the Gridview all at once so its a weird problem.

Answer 1

You could implement client-side sorting of the GridView which would have the added benefit of making your UI feel faster. There is a blog post on sorting with jQuery you could try, though I have not personally used the method suggested.

Alternatively, you could send the values back to the server via AJAX while editing and save them (temporarily) in the session, the database, or where it makes the post sense in your scenario. You would obviously need to retrieve them when sorting.

One final option would be to save your values on the postback caused by the sort command. Mostly you would do something along the lines of handling the OnTextChanged event of the TextBoxes and (as above) saving the values to a temporary store. You would not want these TextBoxes to autopostback - they would simply wait for a postback such as the one caused by your sorting event. In this scenario you could also use the temporary store you populate during the save event to avoid duplicating the effort.