<asp:Repeater ID="rpRepeater" runat="server">
  <HeaderTemplate>
    <table>
      <tr>
        <td>Date</td>
        <td>From</td>
        <td>Subject</td>
   </HeaderTemplate>
   <ItemTemplate>
     <tr class="emailRow">
       <td><%# emailSummary.Date.ToLongDateString()%></td>
       <td><%# emailSummary.Sender %></td>
       <td><%# emailSummary.Subject %><input type="hidden" value="<%# emailSummary.MessageID %>" class="emailMessageId" /></td>                                
     </tr>
   </ItemTemplate>
   <FooterTemplate>
 </table>
 </FooterTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

<script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function() {
            $('.emailRow').click(function() {
                 var emailid = $('.emailMessageId', this).get()[0];
                 document.location = 'Message.aspx?MessageId=' + emailid.value;
            }).hover(
                function() {
                    $('td', this).css({ color: 'yellow', cursor: 'pointer' });
                },
                function() {
                    $('td', this).css({ color: 'black', cursor: 'auto' });
                });           
        });            
    </script>

By putting a hidden field with the id of the message embedded in the row, we can extract the id using jquery in the click event. This is a nice and easy way to get a natural user experience to select a row without using links, or a postback.

But what happens if you have a linkbutton, button or some other postback control on the row in this scheme? The click event will happen first in the jquery handler before the postback can happen, so the linkbutton effectively gets hidden or overridden and doesn’t work.

You can fix this by specifying another css class in the column in which the control is in. I’m adding a delete linkbutton to illustrate this in the following code:

<asp:Repeater ID="rpRepeater" runat="server">
  <HeaderTemplate>
    <table>
      <tr>
        <td>Date</td>
        <td>From</td>
        <td>Subject</td>
        <td>Delete</td>
   </HeaderTemplate>
   <ItemTemplate>
     <tr class="emailRow">
       <td><%# emailSummary.Date.ToLongDateString()%></td>
       <td><%# emailSummary.Sender %></td>
       <td><%# emailSummary.Subject %><input type="hidden" value="<%# emailSummary.MessageID %>" class="emailMessageId" /></td>                                
       <td class="ignoreClick"><asp:LinkButton ID="lbDelete" runat="server" CommandArgument=<%# emailSummary.MessageID %> Text="Delete" OnClick="lbDelete_Click"></asp:LinkButton></td>
 </tr>
   </ItemTemplate>
   <FooterTemplate>
 </table>
 </FooterTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

<script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function() {
            var ignore = false;
            $('.emailRow').click(function() {
                 if (!ignore) {
                   var emailid = $('.emailMessageId', this).get()[0];
                   document.location = 'Message.aspx?MessageId=' + emailid.value;
                 }
            }).hover(
                function() {
                    $('td', this).css({ color: 'yellow', cursor: 'pointer' });
                },
                function() {
                    $('td', this).css({ color: 'black', cursor: 'auto' });
                });           

            $('.ignoreClick').click(function() {
                ignore = true;
            })
        });            
    </script>

I introduced a flag named: ignore – that informs the code to skip the row action on the click to allow the asp.net control to do its postback. I’m sure there are other solutions that are better, this was just the easiest one I could think of.

At first I thought using oledb would do the trick. So I did the following:

string connString = string.Format("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source={0};Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=No;IMEX=1;", excelFile);

using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connString))
{
   conn.Open();

   using (OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand())
   {
      cmd.Connection = conn;
      cmd.CommandText = @"SELECT * from [" + ddlWorksheetNames.SelectedValue + "$]";

      using (OleDbDataReader sReader = cmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection))
      {
         List<string> arrID = new List<string>();
         while (sReader.Read())
         {
            arrID.Add(merchantCartId);
         }
         conn.Close();
      }
   }
}

This seemingly worked ok, until I tested it with mixed type data. Because the Jet provider tries to guess the data type of the data, if it thinks that all the data are ints, it will ignore strings. So I found out you can try to force the engine to treat everything as a string by putting IMEX=1 in the connection string, and also by changing the TypeGuessRows key to have a value of 0 in the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel for 64bit machines, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel for 32bit)

Unfortunately doing this causes larger int values to be translated into scientific notation. I just want the integer in its normal form to be translated to a string. There are really no good ways around this problem, unless you modify the Excel document by prepending the integers with a ‘ or by some other preprocessing technique. This is not an option when you don’t want users of your application to change their spreadsheet just to get it to work with your application.

My next try was to use the Excel Objects Library. So I downloaded the Office Primary Interop Assemblies at:
Office Primary Interop Assemblies
And I worked up a quick solution:

var xlApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.ApplicationClass();
object misValue = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;
var xlWorkBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open("YOURFILENAME", 0, true, 5, "", "", true,
  Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlPlatform.xlWindows, "\t", false, false, 0, true, 1, 0);
var xlWorkSheet = (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Worksheet)xlWorkBook.Worksheets.get_Item(1);

List<string> arrID = new List<string>();
int row = 1;
while (((Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range)xlWorkSheet.Cells[row, 1]).Value2 != null)
{
  arrID.Add(((Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range)xlWorkSheet.Cells[row, 1]).Value2.ToString());
  row++;
}

This worked great. But when I needed to deploy this to the test and eventually the production servers, I realized that Office needs to be installed on these machines for this to work. Plus any other developers would need Office to get this to compile correctly. So this option was not feasible.

Finally after looking around, I found that there is an open source library called NPOI that does all kinds of Office related import/export stuff without needing Office installed. You can find it at: NPOI library

Here is a quick sample of reading excel data using the library:

var file = new FileStream("YOURFILENAME", FileMode.Open);
var workbook = new HSSFWorkbook(file);
var sheet = workbook.GetSheet("YOURWORKSHEET");

int row = 0;
var arrID = new List<string>();
while (sheet.GetRow(row) != null && 
         sheet.GetRow(row).GetCell(0) != null &&
         sheet.GetRow(row).GetCell(0).ToString() != "")
{
   arrID.Add(sheet.GetRow(row).GetCell(0).ToString());
   row++;                    
}        

Finally, I found a solution that allows my application to read or import data from Excel without ignoring data, and without convert large integers to scientific notation. Sometimes things that should be easy take much more time than they should.

An attempt was made to set a report parameter [parameter name] that is not defined in this report.

The solution to this problem is to use the Reset method on the ReportViewer before you set the data for the ReportViewer.

ReportViewer1.Reset()

Once I did this, everything ran great.

It turns out that you need to add a Handler Mapping for the report viewer control if you are using IIS7. This wasn’t happening on my development workstation because I was using the built in Cassini web server.

This is what fixed it:

Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and select your Web application.
Under IIS area, double-click on Handler Mappings icon.
At the Action pane on your right, click on Add Managed Handler.
At the Add Managed Handler dialog, enter the following:

Request path: Reserved.ReportViewerWebControl.axd
Type: Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.HttpHandler, Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a (this is a drop down)
Name: Reserved-ReportViewerWebControl-axd

Thanks to:

http://otkfounder.blogspot.com/2007/11/solving-reportviewer-rendering-issue-on.html

The first mistake I made was using the latest ReportViewer control on my machine.
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=10.0.0.0
This version is actually part of Visual Studio 2010, I installed the Beta on my machine.
I was developing using Visual Studio 2008 though, and the machine I was deploying to didn’t have the assembly in the GAC. It took my awhile to track this down, but the version I really needed to use was:
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=9.0.0.0
This is the version used with Visual Studio 2008. I should have noticed this before, because the designer was breaking when I used the wrong version of the assembly in my web app.

This is why I got this error when I first deployed with Version 10:
Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified
I thought that I needed to install the Microsoft Report Viewer 2008 SP1 Redistributable. I did this and of course it still didn’t work.

By the way, to look at the assemblies in the GAC use gacutil.exe. This was located on my machine in:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin
gacutil.exe -l
This gives you a list of a the assemblies in your GAC.

After changing my app to use the 9.0.0.0 control, the app stopped through the exception mentioned above.

Here is a good resource for fixing this:
http://www.donkitchen.com/2009/05/29/ms-reporting-services-report-viewer-control-printing-errors-with-ie8-and-vista/

Then on the code behind file I accessed it as a HtmlGenericControl, since there is no specific Html server control for it. This seemed to work fine, until I tested it and it rendered as:
<br><br/>

The problem with this is that some browsers treat this as two separate <br>
elements, resulting in two line breaks.

The solution I came up with is to use the LiteralControl. <asp:literal>
You can set exactly what you want the HTML to be on this control in the code behind, and of course set the Visible attribute programmatically. I completely forgot about this control, and can now see some of the reasons why you would use it.

ASP.NET MVC:
Here is the free chapter from a ASP.NET MVC book from Scott Guthrie:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/03/10/free-asp-net-mvc-ebook-tutorial.aspx
It’s an almost 200 pages chapter that demonstrate how to build an end-to-end application with ASP.NET MVC framework. You can also get the source code from that link as well. If you have time, I would highly recommend going through this chapter to get familiar with ASP.NET MVC. I plan to do the same myself.
Here are three ASP.NET MVC books:
http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-Framework-Steven-Sanderson/dp/1430210079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255315851&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/ASP-NET-Framework-Unleashed-Stephen-Walther/dp/0672329980/ref=pd_sim_b_2
http://www.amazon.com/ASP-NET-MVC-Action-Jeffrey-Palermo/dp/1933988622/ref=pd_sim_b_4
ASP.NET AJAX:
And the book that’s excellent on ASP.NET AJAX is:
http://www.amazon.com/ASP-NET-AJAX-Action-Alessandro-Gallo/dp/1933988142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244514911&sr=8-1
Here are a few good articles on ASP.NET AJAX:
http://encosia.com/2007/07/11/why-aspnet-ajax-updatepanels-are-dangerous/(personally I would advise not use Update Panel as it’s not pure AJAX, it’s more like a psuedo AJAX that doesn’t save time or resource)
http://encosia.com/2009/05/13/what-aspnet-developers-should-know-about-jquery/
http://encosia.com/2008/03/27/using-jquery-to-consume-aspnet-json-web-services/
http://encosia.com/2008/06/05/3-mistakes-to-avoid-when-using-jquery-with-aspnet-ajax/
http://www.aspnetpro.com/articles/2009/05/asp200905de_f/asp200905de_f.asp

On ASP.NET 2.0 – 3.5:
Here is a more focused ASP.NET training path that I put together for another brother. Some of these you may have already done. I am listing these in the order:

1. Go these two videos: http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/video-34.aspx and http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/video-33.aspx

2. Go through the videos in the “Videos for ASP.NET 2.0 Beginners” section at: http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/

3. Go through these videos on SQL server briefly to get acquainted with using SQL Express: http://www.asp.net/learn/sql-videos/

4. Go through this 3 part article on building a 3 tier ASP.NET application: http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=416 This is more advanced, so follow the step by step tutorials closely and make sure you understand all the concepts presented here. This will give you a good foundation. 5. Go through these 3 articles: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa581776.aspx, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa581779.aspx, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa581781.aspx These may be similiar topics as #4, but because this is where the meat of the tier programming is, it’s good to get really familiar with it.

6. Go through all the Data Access tutorials here: http://www.asp.net/learn/data-access/ Someone actually made videos out of these tutorials at: http://www.dotnetvideos.net/ The registration for the site is free and you can also get 6 months free of ASP.NET Pro magazine (http://www.dotnetvideos.net/aspnetProsubscriptionoffer/tabid/292/Default.aspx) which is probably the best ASP.NET magazine out there.

7. Go through these video tutorials on ASP.NET 3.5: http://www.asp.net/learn/3.5-videos/

8. Go through these videos on ASP.NET AJAX: http://www.asp.net/learn/ajax-videos/ I think these will probably keep you busy for awhile.

Some other resources: http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/aspnet.aspx?tab=virtuallabs http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/aa336567.aspx http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/aa336576.aspx
Essential ASP.NET 2.0http://www.amazon.com/Essential-ASP-NET-2-0-Fritz-Onion/dp/0321237706 Maximizing ASP.NEThttp://www.amazon.com/Maximizing-ASP-NET-Object-Oriented-Development-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321294475/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198128081&sr=1-1
Reference links (lots of free video tutorials and articles): http://www.asp.net/get-started/ Here are some more resources and tutorials on ASP.NET 2.0. http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/multimedia/default.aspx#threepoint http://www.asp.net/Tutorials/quickstart.aspx http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/AspNet2.0.asp http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/adonet2.0.asp

Free ASP.NET training:http://www.appdev.com/promo/freetrain.asp?PC=RN00848&T=d_SASP
Other resources:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/default.aspx http://www.asp.net/learn/data-access/ http://www.asp.net/community/articles/ http://www.asp.net/ajax/ http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/article/

RSS feeds (You should make good use of Google Reader for these):

http://weblogs.asp.net/MainFeed.aspx http://www.nikhilk.net/Rss.ashx http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/rss/rss.aspx http://mattberseth.com/atom.xml http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRssCategory?categoryName=ASP.NET http://www.asp.net/community/articles/rss.ashx http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/rickstrahl http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/Rss.aspx http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScottOnWriting http://www.pheedo.com/f/dotnetslackers http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/rss.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/MainFeed.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/rss.aspx
http://www.asp.net/community/articles/rss.ashx
http://weblogs.asp.net/despos/rss.aspx
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScottOnWriting
http://aspdotnetcodebook.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss