GridView controls and hidden columns

[Mark Rae]

Hi,

See the following:
http://www.devnewsgroups.net/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework/topic38190.aspx

This was a particularly useful feature of the old DataGrid control which
seems to be missing from the new GridView control

What is the "preferred" method of doing this in a GridView?

Any assistance gratefully received.

Mark

 

[PeterKellner]

The problem is that in asp.net 2.0, Microsoft has decided not to store
hidden columns in viewstate for security reasons. That is, say you put
payroll data in a table and made the column hidden for non-hr people. Us
developer types could look at viewstate and get it.

The workaround is to add to the gridview attribute
datakeynames=[myhiddendatavalue,...] and this will force the hidden column
back into viewstate. There are also issues around encrypting viewstate and
performance you should keep in mind also.

Peter Kellner
http://peterkellner.net

 

[Mark Rae]

The problem is that in asp.net 2.0, Microsoft has decided not to store
hidden columns in viewstate for security reasons. That is, say you put
payroll data in a table and made the column hidden for non-hr people. Us
developer types could look at viewstate and get it.

Seems reasonable.

The workaround is to add to the gridview attribute
datakeynames=[myhiddendatavalue,...] and this will force the hidden column
back into viewstate. There are also issues around encrypting viewstate
and performance you should keep in mind also.

Understood - thanks for the response.