Hello,

It has been awhile since I have manipulated data in a Gridview. I am binding an collection to a Gridview and one of the values contains non-html line breaks (\n). I would like to convert these to html line breaks (<br />). The code below works fine.

protected void gridHistory_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
	GridViewRow row = e.Row;
	if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
	{
		row.Cells[0].Text = row.Cells[0].Text.Replace("\n", "<br />");
	}
}

Is there an "easier"/"better" way of doing it?

Thanks.

Todd,

I typically put that type of formatting in the GridView markup, either explicitly if the field is never null, or calling a method to handle the null values and make the replacement.

<ItemTemplate>
	<%# ((string)Eval("Details")).Replace("\n", "<br/>") %>
</ItemTemplate>

<ItemTemplate>
	<%# FormatString(Eval("Details")) %>
</ItemTemplate>

Aaron 

Hi Aaron,

Your solution is more aesthtic than mine and it works just as well.

Thank you for the input.

oh my god, you guys are awesome!!

I have tried this problem for two days, but I couldn't figure it out.

Finally, I got it!!

Thank you Aaron

After 6 years,

thank you for solution. i was searching everywhere...

Hello,

i'm beginner for asp.net.

now i have a problem with this.

<asp:Label ID="Label2" runat="server" Text='<%# ((string)Eval("about")).Replace("\n", "<br/>")  %>'></asp:Label>

if about is empty, it's giving an error. how can i use if(Eval("about"))!=null) whit this?

Thanks. 

 You can make your own Server-Side function that takes a string as the parameter and does the replace only if the string isn't null and then returns it. Then you can do this.

<asp:Label ID="Label2" runat="server" Text='<%# YourFunction(Eval("about")) %>'></asp:Label>

thank you very much.
actually, i tried it before.
if "about" is empty, i thing eval is giving this error. (with or without an if-null function)

so this didn't work too: satirdonusum((string)Eval("about"))

Error is:
Unable to cast object of type 'System.DBNull' to type 'System.String'.

i can't fix this. can you help?

Hi emrahustun,

A way to work around this is to declare your formatting method to accept an object, then check for DBNull and format appropriately.  So, you'd have:

<%# Eval("about") %>

and the formatting method would be something like:

protected string FormatString(object o)
{
    if (o.Equals(DBNull.Value))
    {
        return String.Empty;
    }
    else
    {
        return ((string)o).Replace("\n", "<br/>");
    }
}

Hope that helps.

Aaron

 Thank you so much Contributor.

 That works.

 Hi, this alternative may be useful for any VB user formating in a DetailsView:

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Description">
                <ItemTemplate>
                 <%#Replace(Container.DataItem("Description"), vbCrLf, "<br>")%>
                </ItemTemplate>
                </asp:TemplateField>

Thank you Aaron for the starter, helped me work this out.

Tim