A more elegant solution to display gridview header and footer when the data source is empty. (CITE)

Http://weblogs.asp.net/joewrobel/archive/2008/01/30/a-more-elegant-solution-to-display-gridview-header-and-footer-when-the-data-source-is-empty.aspx

So here is my solution. I'll cover the main points of interest and if you want to see more, I have
Uploaded all the source and example to the new msdn code Gallery.
Http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/AlwaysShowHeaderFoot

Start out by extending the gridview control and add the following structure.
The most important part here is to override the specified mdatabinding method.

As you can see here. I am intercepting the data and making sure there is at lease one row.
If there is, the control behaves normally.
On the line with the red arrow, I am checking if the binding source is a dataview.
If it is, I can just add a row here and be done with it.
If the binging source is not a dataview (or dataset), then I fire an event that will need to be handled.

The event "mustaddarow", as seen here, will provide access to the binding data and allow you to add a row.

Here is a snippet from a page where I handle the mustaddarow event.
In this case, I am binding a list of products to the gridview.
As you can see, I'm just adding a new product to the list. It doesn' t matter what data you add here
Because it will get hidden in back in the gridview.

And finally back in the gridview, I override the ondatabound method so I can hide that extra row.

So there you have it. This is my first blog post ever. It's exciting, but I have to admit, I'm a little scared.
I see there is a lot of commotion going on about the overwhelming number of useless blogs lately.
Hopefully someone will get some use out of this.

Thanks
-Joe