I think that while the example you provided doesn’t quite fit what I want to do, in that I have table headings that I also don’t want to be visible unless some results are returned, it certainly is useful to know about using the itemPlaceHolder property of the DataView.

I guess what I’ll need to do is to make the whole table not visble prior to binding and then once the DataBinding has occurred look to see if data was retrieved and then just make the table vsisible or not.

Thanks again.

So you will need to build a table that contains a placeholder describing where the template instances should go, and seperately define a template table. Something like this:

<table id="results">
  <tbody>
     <tr id="ph">
        <td>Now Loading...</td>
     </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
 
 
<table style="display:hidden">
  <tbody id="searchResultItems" class="sys-template">
      <tr><td>...</td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Then do what you are doing except also set dataView.set_itemPlaceholder to the ph element. When the DataView renders, the placeholder element (the TR containing the TD “now loading”) is completely removed, and the instances of the template are inserted into the tbody at the point where it was. So that also means, by the way, you can define header/footer rows, like so:

<table id="results">
  <tbody>
     <tr><td>header</td></tr>
     <tr id="ph">
        <td>Now Loading...</td>
     </tr>
     <tr><td>footer</td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Hope that helps.

I am having trouble binding a DataView where the template is inside a table. What I want to be able to do is have the template for the DataView be a tbody that will repeat for the number of search results returned by the DataSource assigned to my DataView. I therefore don’t want any of the table visible should zero results be returned.

In Dave’s comment he mentions that I should attach the DataView to the table but point the template at the tbody.
I have tried a number of different things here but may just be doing something obviously wrong.

What I have so far is:
searchResultsListView = $create(Sys.UI.DataView, { dataSource: searchResultsDataSource }, { itemCreated: onSearchResultItemCreated }, {}, $get(‘results’));
searchResultsListView.set_itemTemplate(’searchResultItems’);

Where ‘results’ is the whole table and is ’searchResultItems’ what should be the repeating tbody.

The error that I get is being thrown from Sys$UI$DataView$_getTemplate() where it does this:

if ((e !== template) && this._elementContains(e, template, true)) {
throw Error.invalidOperation(Sys.TemplateRes.misplacedTemplate);
}

And the error is: ‘DataView item template must not be a child element of the DataView.’

The template is searchResultsItem and e (element) is the results (the table that will contain the repeated items).

[WebMethod]
public static IEnumerable GetFeedburnerItems()
{
XDocument feedXML =
XDocument.Load(“http://feeds.encosia.com/Encosia”);

var feeds =
from feed in feedXML.Descendants(“item”)
select new
{
Date = DateTime.Parse(feed.Element(“pubDate”).Value)
.ToShortDateString(),
Title = feed.Element(“title”).Value,
Link = feed.Element(“link”).Value,
Description = feed.Element(“description”).Value
};

return feeds;
}

PS: I got error message when VB web service returns IENumerable datatype: Can’t serialize IENumerable.

This is a nice article.Helped very much with ajax preview 2 experimenting.

Thanks,
Thani

In a real world setup it should be noted that the element will often be in a master page where as data bound items will quite likely be in a user control. Setting up a passthrough from control to page to master template is definitely possible, but it’s a lot of wiring for a common task. For this reason, I really liked the fact that other namespaces could be defined at the local level. This might be worth accounting for in future versions.

If I’m following your notes, I should be able to use the following:

<div xmlns:sys="javascript:Sys" xmlns:dv="javascript:Sys.Preview.UI.DataView" sys:activate="RSSItem">
  <div id="RSSItem" class="sys-template" sys:attach="dv">
    <h1>{{ Title }}</h2>
  </div>
</div>

And then, in my call back, simply say:

$find('RSSItem').set_data(result);

When I do this, however, I get a null reference on $find(); this works perfectly, however, if I attach the dataview using $create() instead of the declarative markup.