In this post, I will show how to convert IEnumerable to string (Html table). Assume you have a customer class that has three properties named FirstName, LastName, and Age. Now, you want to display customer collection on UI. For this, I have created the following method, which retrieves property name and value dynamically (using reflection) and return the result as a string
public static string ToHtmlTable(IEnumerable list, string tableSyle, string headerStyle, string rowStyle, string alternateRowStyle)
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
<style type="text/css">
.headerStyle
{
background-color: #abc;
}
.rowStyle
{
background-color: #def;
}
.alternateRowStyle
{
background-color: #aabbcc;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<div id="table" runat="server">
</div>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
table.InnerHtml = ToHtmlTable(EmployeeDAL.Employees, "", "headerStyle", "rowStyle", "alternateRowStyle");
}
public static string ToHtmlTable<T>(IEnumerable<T> list, string tableSyle, string headerStyle, string rowStyle, string alternateRowStyle)
{
var result = new StringBuilder();
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(tableSyle))
{
result.Append("<table id=\"" + typeof(T).Name + "Table\">");
}
else
{
result.Append("<table id=\"" + typeof(T).Name + "Table\" class=\"" + tableSyle + "\">");
}
var propertyArray = typeof(T).GetProperties();
foreach (var prop in propertyArray)
{
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(headerStyle))
{
result.AppendFormat("<th>{0}</th>", prop.Name);
}
else
{
result.AppendFormat("<th class=\"{0}\">{1}</th>", headerStyle, prop.Name);
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < list.Count(); i++)
{
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(rowStyle) && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(alternateRowStyle))
{
result.AppendFormat("<tr class=\"{0}\">", i % 2 == 0 ? rowStyle : alternateRowStyle);
}
else
{
result.AppendFormat("<tr>");
}
foreach (var prop in propertyArray)
{
object value = prop.GetValue(list.ElementAt(i), null);
result.AppendFormat("<td>{0}</td>", value ?? String.Empty);
}
result.AppendLine("</tr>");
}
result.Append("</table>");
return result.ToString();
}
}
public class Employee
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
}
public class EmployeeDAL
{
public static List<Employee> Employees
{
get
{
return new List<Employee>()
{
new Employee(){FirstName = "F001",LastName = "L001",Age = 31},
new Employee(){FirstName = "F002",LastName = "L002",Age = 32},
new Employee(){FirstName = "F003",LastName = "L003",Age = 33},
new Employee(){FirstName = "F004",LastName = "L004",Age = 34},
};
}
}
}