Entity Templates in Dynamic Data

Entity templates offer a new way to customize the layout of data without requiring you to create a custom page. Page templates use the FormView control (instead of the DetailsView control, as used in page templates in earlier versions of Dynamic Data) and the DynamicEntity control to render Entity templates. This gives you more control over the markup that is rendered by Dynamic Data.

The following list shows the new project directory layout that contains entity templates:

\DynamicData\EntityTemplates

\DynamicData\EntityTemplates\Default.ascx

\DynamicData\EntityTemplates\Default_Edit.ascx

\DynamicData\EntityTemplates\Default_Insert.ascx

The EntityTemplate directory contains templates for how to display data model objects. By default, objects are rendered by using the Default.ascx template, which provides markup that looks just like the markup created by the DetailsView control used by Dynamic Data in ASP.NET 3.5 SP1. The following example shows the markup for the Default.ascx control:

<asp:EntityTemplate runat="server" ID="TemplateContainer1">

<tr

<td>

<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" OnInit="Label_Init" />

</td>

<td>

<asp:DynamicControl runat="server" OnInit="DynamicControl_Init" />

</td>

</tr>

</ItemTemplate>

</asp:EntityTemplate>

The default templates can be edited to change the look and feel for the entire site. There are templates for display, edit, and insert operations. New templates can be added based on the name of the data object in order to change the look and feel of just one type of object. For example, you can add the following template:

\DynamicData\EntityTemplates\Products.aspx

The template might contain the following markup:

<tr>

<td>Category</td>

</tr>

The new entity templates are displayed on a page by using the new DynamicEntity control. At run time, this control is replaced with the contents of the entity template. The following markup shows the FormView control in the Detail.aspx page template that uses the entity template. Notice the DynamicEntity element in the markup.

<asp:FormView runat="server" ID="FormView1"

DataSourceID="DetailsDataSource"

OnItemDeleted="FormView1_ItemDeleted">

<asp:DynamicEntity runat="server" />

<asp:DynamicHyperLink ID="EditHyperLink" runat="server"

Action="Edit" Text="Edit" />

<asp:LinkButton ID="DeleteLinkButton" runat="server"

CommandName="Delete"

CausesValidation="false"

OnClientClick='return confirm("Are you sure you want to delete this item?");'

Text="Delete" />

</td>