Rich set of controls in ASP.NET 2.0

In this article you will learn what are data bound controls in ASP.NET 2.0.

Data bound controls:

You use data bound controls to generate your application's user interface for working with data. The data bound controls can be used to display and edit database data, XML data or just about any other type of data you can imagine.

There are three types of data bound controls:

1. List controls
2. Tabular data bound controls
3. Hierarchical data bound controls

List controls:

List controls are used to display simple option lists. The ASP.NET 2.0 framework includes the following five list controls.

• Bulleted list
• Checkbox list
• Dropdown list
• List box
• Radio button list 

Bulleted list: Display a bulleted list of items. Each item can be displayed as text, a link button, or a hyperlink. 

Checkbox list: Display a list of checkboxes.  Multiple check boxes in the list can be selected. 

Dropdown list: Display a dropdown list. Only one item in the dropdown list can be selected. 

List box: You can configure this control so that only one item in the list can be selected or multiple items can be selected.

Radio button list: Display a list of radio buttons. Only one radio button can be selected.

Tabular data bound controls:

Tabular data bound controls are the main set of controls that you use when working with database data.

There are five tabular data bound controls. These controls can be divided into two types.

• Multiple data items at a time 
• Single data item at a time

To display set of data item at a time you can use any of the following:

• Grid view control: Display a set of data items in an HTML table. For Example: If you can use the grid view control to display all the records contained in the movies database table. This control enables you to display, sort, Page, select and edit data.

• Data list control:  Display a set of data items in an HTML table. Unlike the grid view control, more than one data item can be displayed in a single row.

• Repeater control: Display a set of data items using a template. Unlike the grid view and data list controls, a repeater control does not automatically render on the HTML table.

To display a single data item at a time you can use any of the following:

• Detail view control: Display a single data item in an HTML table. For Example: You can use the detail view control to display a single record from movies database table. This control enables you to display, page, edit and add data.

• Form view control: Use a template to display a single data item. Unlike the detail view, a form view enables you to use to layout a form by using template.

Hierarchical data bound controls:

A hierarchical data bound control can be used to display nested data items.

For Example: you can use this control to display the folder and page structure of your website.

• Menu control: Menu control is use to display data items in a static or dynamic menu.

• Tree view control: Tree view control is use to display data items in a tree.