Taking user input from a table/gridview

Question

I need a table that's 3 columns and 10 rows. How do I put a textbox in each of the cells? I know I can do it with 10 textboxes named something like textbox1, textbox2,...,textbox10. However I want to get the data in a loop from the three text boxes commit the data to a database. In other words make it more efficient than just hard coding for each text box and calling the update command 10 times?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:28

For straight HTML, a start of a solution at end of post..

Note, you mention asp, C# etc etc.. I have never touched ASP.NET, but the following is how this would be accomplished in C# using Windows Forms. I'm not sure exactly where you are trying to implement the text box grid, but this example should be transferrable to a number of platforms (ASP.Net has a datagridview, but I think implementation is a bit different) given a bit of elbow grease. There are numerous tutorials online for setting up a datagridview in asp, so I will leave that part to you and the google.

I would use a datagrid view. There's a bit of setup but in a nutshell, presuming the table should be completely blank at the beginning of the routine:

datagridview1.DataSource = null;
datagridview1.Columns.Clear();  //Just make sure things are blank.

datagridview1.Columns.Add("Column1","Column1");
datagridview1.Columns.Add("Column2","Column2");
datagridview1.Columns.Add("Column3","Column3");

datagridview1.Rows.Clear();
for(int i = 0;i<10;i++)
{
    datagridview1.Rows.Add()
}
datagridview1.EditMode = DataGridViewEditMode.EditOnKeystroke;

When you insert the DataGridView object, you need to make sure to disable user ability to add rows so that an 11th row doesn't appear.

I would probably pre-fill each cell with a "" just to make sure you don't have to deal with null values. If this is done, then you can reference each cell by the following:

for(int i = 0;i<datagridview1.Rows.Count;i++)
{
    string val = datagridview1.Rows[rowIndex].Cells[<Column Index, or Name>].Value.ToString();
}

Stack Overflow discussion of making a table editable

I tried the following and am getting a table of textboxes which are editable

<body>
  <table>
        <tr>
    <th>Month</th>
    <th>Savings</th>
    <th>SomethingElse</th>
      </tr>
      <tr>
      <td><input type="text"></td>
      <td><input type="text"></td>
      <td><input type="text"></td>
      </tr>
      </tr>
      <tr>
      <td><input type="text"></td>
      <td><input type="text"></td>
      <td><input type="text"></td>
      </tr>
      </tr>
  </table>
</body>

Next step would be to determine how to access that table. I presume there's a method for naming html elements that you could use to grab the data. I'm not an HTML guy, so.. Just trying to home in on a way forward for you.

Additional links referencing reading HTML tables from C# and or ASP.NET.. it appears that there is also an ASP:Table that could be used..

C# Thread

ASP Thread

Thanks for your answer. However I'm working with a html and unless I'm missing something I can't use datagridviews. I've used them quite a bit with windows forms but I didn't think they were accessible in my current context. — coffy43, Mar 03 '16 at 18:35
you may be right. I saw the original question by filtering on c# tag, so was thinking it was a C# / .NET question. I added the first paragraph and left the post thinking it may give you a direction to run. If using C# / ASP.NET it appears that there are data grid views. If this is being written in straight HTML, not so much. — Nate M., Mar 03 '16 at 18:38
@coffy43 for other prospective posters, you may want to add some detail to the question specifically a block of code / html that you currently have for implementing the solution, or a start to that solution. — Nate M., Mar 03 '16 at 18:40
Well that's my problem other than what I have described (which will work but is a mess). I have nothing to go off of. I've tried a data grid. Thinking it would be the same as a data grid view. However they are not. — coffy43, Mar 03 '16 at 18:44
I forgot to keep checking back here and I did what you did. Then using Request.Form["textbox"+i] in a loop I was able to get it working. Thank you. — coffy43, Mar 03 '16 at 20:39

Taking user input from a table/gridview

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