Easily add confirm before delete in gridview

Introduction

Often you want to add a confirmation for the user, before deleting a row with the gridview control. This can of course easily be done by placing a link in an itemtemplate, and adding the correct value in the onclientclick property. But if you want / have to do this from code behind. A dependency on your cell index, will eventually be overseen, with possible disastrous results.

Background

you may face a problem. Even though it can easily be done through the Cells collection, one day, someone is going to add / move / remove a column, without looking in the code behind.

Using the code

The code below will demonstrate how this can be done with a method that will find the delete buttons automatically, and add the necessary code.

//


protected void gvBooks_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
  AddConfirmDelete((GridView)sender, e);
}

/// <summary>

/// If the gridview has a command field where showdeletebutton is true, then 

/// it add a confirm message. 

/// This function should be called in the RowDataBound event

/// </summary>


public static void AddConfirmDelete(GridView gv, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
 if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
 {
  foreach (DataControlField dcf in gv.Columns)
  {
  if (dcf.ToString() == "CommandField")
   {
    if (((CommandField)dcf).ShowDeleteButton == true)
    {
     e.Row.Cells[gv.Columns.IndexOf(dcf)].Attributes
     .Add("onclick", "return confirm(\"Are you sure?\")");
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
//