Gridview caption to export to csv

[coder91]

Hi I have a gridview which is bound to a datatable called datasource. The datatable is populated with data from the database which is then displayed in gridview. However I would like to add a title to the gridview, I tried this with gridiview.caption and it works fine. However users are able to download the gridview as a csv, the code for this is

 protected void downRep_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            String name = Request.QueryString["name"];

            MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
            core.Data.CSVDataWriter c = new CSVDataWriter();
            c.Export(ms, datasource);

            Response.Clear();
            Response.ContentType = "text/csv";
            Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + name + ".csv");
            Response.BinaryWrite(ms.ToArray());
            Response.Flush();
            Response.Close();
            Response.End();
        }

as you can see it is exporting the data stored in datasource to the csv so it is unable to see the caption that is included in the gridview. Is there a way I can add the title to datasource?

[djjeavons]

Hi

I haven't used the GridView Caption property before but I am assuming that this adds some form of title to the GridView which could span the number of columns? Is that correct?

If so, adding this data to a CSV file would break the structure as it is not really data. What are you trying to achieve as the end result? Is it that a user can use the data or that you want to prettify the data when read in something like Excel?

[coder91]

Yea that's exactly what the caption does.

All I really need is that when the user downloads the csv file it has a title at the top of the data, not the top of the file. So that when they print the csv they know what report they are looking at.

[djjeavons]

Well, one way would be to insert a row at the beginning of the table prior to writing it out to the CSV file that contains the GridView caption. I assume you can grab this property value.

        Dim newRow As DataRow = dataSource.NewRow
        newRow("Column1") = GridView.Caption
        dataSource.Rows.InsertAt(newRow, 0)

Then once the CSV file is created, delete the row so as not to affect your actual data.

        dataSource.Rows.RemoveAt(0)

HTH