How To Make A WebGrid Row Clickable

This snippet is one in a series showing how to use jQuery to enhance the behaviour of a Web Pages WebGrid. This example shows how to make an entire row clickable so that the user is taken to another page that displays details of the selected row.

This example makes use of the SQL CE 4.0 version of the Northwind database. It assumes that you have a layout page that references jQuery and includes a RenderSection call to an optional section named "script":

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8" />
        <title>@Page.Title</title>
        <script src="@Href("~/scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
        <link href="@Href("~/styles/site.css")" rel="stylesheet" />
        @RenderSection("script", required: false)
    </head>
    <body>
        @RenderBody()
    </body>
</html>

The main page gets data from the database, specifies some columns and an AJAX update container. It also includes the jQuery that makes rows clickable in the script section:

@{
    Page.Title = "Clickable Rows";
    var db = Database.Open("Northwind");
    var query = "SELECT * FROM Customers";
    var data = db.Query(query);
    var columns = new[]{"CustomerID", "CompanyName", "ContactName", "Address", "City", "Country", "Phone"};
    var grid = new WebGrid(data, ajaxUpdateContainerId: "grid", columnNames: columns);
}
<h1>Clickable Rows</h1>
<div id="grid">
    @grid.GetHtml(    
        tableStyle : "table",
        alternatingRowStyle : "alternate",
        headerStyle : "header"
    )
</div>
@section script{
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function(){
        $('tbody tr').live('hover', function(){
            $(this).toggleClass('clickable');
        }).live('click', function(){
            location.href = '/Details/' + $(this).find('td:first').text();  
        }); 
    });
</script>       
}

The CSS for the 'clickable' style is defined as follows:

.clickable{
    cursor: pointer;
    background: #ffff99;
}

As the user runs their cursor (hovers) over the rows of data, the current row turns yellow and the the cursor changes to a hand with a pointing finger shape. This event handler has only been applied to the table rows within the tbody element, so that the table head and foot are not affected. At the same time, the row has a click event handler added, which navigates the user to a page called Details. The text content of the first cell in each row ('td:first') is appended to the URL as UrlData. Accordingly, clicking on the first row will take the user to Details/ALFKI. The code to retrieve and display the related details in this example is simple:

@{
    Page.Title = "Details";
    var db = Database.Open("Northwind");
    var query = "SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE CustomerID = @0";
    var data = db.QuerySingle(query, UrlData[0]);

}
<h1>Details</h1>
@foreach(var item in data.GetDynamicMemberNames()){
    <strong>@item:</strong> @data[item]<br />
}

A demo containing the source code is available here.

Date Posted: 23 August 2011 11:23
Last Updated: 19 December 2012 21:04
Posted by: Mikesdotnetting
Total Views to date: 31292

Comments

10 September 2011 03:15 from Jacob Fernandez

Thank you for this working tutorial. But I have things in my mind. Is it reusable? What if I have 10 webgrids? What should I do with the jquery?

13 September 2011 09:03 from Mikesdotnetting

@Jacob,

You can use jQuery to target specific WebGrids by placing them in their own divs, with their own id for instance.

04 October 2011 15:51 from CodeGolem

Hi! Nice article!
Thank you for sharing.

But what if I don't want to display the ID field on the grid?

:)

18 January 2012 12:49 from Ola

GREAT example!

The only problem for me is that after changing the grid page it stops working - the grid is not clickable any more.

15 February 2012 23:34 from Mindaugas

Hi, your tutorials and examples are excellent. I tried to combine the jquery example from searchable webgrid with the jquery from this example but it didn't work. Both have there own <script> section but only the second one seems to be in effect. Can you point me in the right direction? Should I combine the jquery into one?

Thanks again.

@section script{

<script type="text/javascript">

   $(function(){

        $('th a, tfoot a').live('click', function() {

            $('form').attr('action', $(this).attr('href')).submit();

            return false;

        });

    });

</script>

}

19 January 2013 04:54 from Britto

Works Perfectly... Thx

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