Gridview - Manipulating a data item in TemplateField

Question

I'm displaying four data fields in a single column of a gridview using template field. One of the data fields is a date field. Instead of showing normal date, I want to display relative hours/days. (like: 2 hours ago/ 2 days ago). How can i manipulate the date field inside the template field column. Please suggest.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can use <%# Eval("Date Field") %> to manipulate the data that is bound to the column at runtime. You can even call functions in your code-behind by doing something like this:

<%# this.MyFunction(Eval("Date Field Name")) %>

There may be a better way to do it, but this has worked for me in the past. Note that Eval returns an object.

Answer 2

If other views/pages will use that format, you might want to think about putting that in a business service layer or some utility function so it's not buried/duplicated in the UI.

// Business Service
public IList<Person> GetAllActivePeople()
{
 var people = _yourDataRepository.FindActive();
 foreach(var p in people)
 {
  p.MyRelativeDateField = ConvertToRelativeHoursDays(p.MyDateField);
 }
 return people;
}

// probably better as a utility class if other dates of other objects can use this...
private string ConvertToRelativeHoursDays(DateTime someDate)
{
    // implement formatting here
}