[SOLVED] Optionally display a text in place of GridView when the GridView has no rows

Optionally display a text in place of GridView when the GridView has no rows

I have a basic GridView that displays a list of tasks to do (just an example)

<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" AllowSorting="True" >
    <Columns>
        <asp:BoundField DataField="todo" HeaderText="To Do" ReadOnly="True" SortExpression="todo" />
        <asp:BoundField DataField="byDate" HeaderText="By When" ReadOnly="True"

SortExpression="byDate" />

the data source is specified within the aspx page and it is a result set from a stored procedure

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" ConnectionString="..."
      SelectCommand="pToDoList" SelectCommandType="StoredProcedure">
</asp:SqlDataSource>

So the rendered page presents tasks as rows of data (a row per task)

My question is

When there is not data returned by stored procedure the page remains blank. I would like to have a text instead saying for example: "nothing to do today"

How to do that? Thank you

Solution

Use the EmptyDataTemplate:

<asp:gridview id="CustomersGridView" 
        datasourceid="CustomersSqlDataSource" 
        autogeneratecolumns="true"
        runat="server">
        
        <emptydatarowstyle backcolor="LightBlue"
          forecolor="Red"/>
                    
        <emptydatatemplate>
                
          <asp:image id="NoDataImage"
            imageurl="~/images/Image.jpg"
            alternatetext="No Image" 
            runat="server"/>
                        
            No Data Found.  
                
        </emptydatatemplate> 
                
 </asp:gridview>

Example from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.webcontrols.gridview.emptydatatemplate.aspx