Thanks for your response. I would like to have the cells in the column editable to the user, so the user can enter a new, custom name in each cell. This cannot be done if I use a column with drop-down lists (at least I don't know how). Besides that, your solution was fine. Any other ideas?

I coudn't find exactly how to access key client side but there has to be a way to do that as for UltraGridRow there is a method called "getCellFromKey" so it has to be accessible in javascript. just need to find out how.

 Anyone from Infragistics who can confirm/deny that such an option exists?

The Key of a cell should match the Key of its corresponding column.  I wouldn't expect that setting the Key of the cell to something different to the Key of its column to take any effect, but I'm not 100% certain whether it should or shouldn't.

I'm also not certain I understand the end result that the original poster is after.

What I do know is that WebGrid won't handle multiple properties on a single object in a single column in this fashion.  It'll display the result of calling ToString() on an instance of the object.  If using a dropdown won't work, another approach may be to add unbound columns to the grid, one to represent each property of the object you want to display; you can put the values into the grid cells using the InitializeRow event, and you can update the underlying objects in the UpdateRow or UpdateRowBatch events.

I'll try to explain what I want to accomplish, because as I understand it, I've already tried your proposed solution: My objects have two properties: ID and Name. In my unbound webgrid, each row should contain one object. I would like the name of the object to be displayed but not the ID (e.g. the ID must be hidden). I have already tried making an column that contains the ID and made this column hidden, and made a name-column which is not hidden. The thing is that, when I sort the grid client-side by clicking the header of the name-column, the ID-column is not sorted. This means that the ID of the row doesn't "follow" the name, and that's no good!

I'll try making an example:

Row 1: ID = 1, Name = "Carlos"

Row 2: ID = 2, Name = "Andrew"

When I click the name-column and sort the names ascending I get:

Row 1: ID = 1, Name = "Andrew"

Row 2: ID = 2, Name = "Carlos"

The ID-name combinations are not right anymore! Therefore I am seeking a solution where the name-column contains the name and the ID (hidden like a key), so the IDs and the names stick to each other. Hope this explains my problem. Can it be done? :)

Ahah, good catch.  I didn't even consider that one, and this should provide help for others encountering similar problems in the future.

As an additional note, this would also affect any UltraGridRow, UltraGridColumn, or UltraGridBand objects created in code.  If you want to use view state, you should always use the contructor overload that takes a boolean as a parameter (and pass in "true" for that parameter) whenever you dynamically create any of these objects.

You might also be able to sidestep the need to dynamically create cell objects altogether, by adding the new row to a Rows collection in your grid first.  Doing so causes cells to be created in that row to correspond to each column.  These new cells are tracked in view state automatically, at least assuming the row is.  In other words:

using Infragistics.WebUI.UltraWebGrid;
...
UltraGridRow row = new UltraGridRow(true); // track the row in view state
this.ultraGrid1.Rows.Add(row);
// You can now access cells in the row object here, without needing to manually create them

umm. a shot in the dark here, but have you tried using a column template and have two text boxes within that template, one with the id that is not visible the other with text....

here is an example of something I did awhile back... I don't think it would be to difficult to add editing..

<igtbl:TemplatedColumn BaseColumnName="TemplateColumn" Key="SigImage" >

<CellTemplate>

ImageUrl= '<%# "getimage.aspx?id=" & Databinder.eval(Container.DataItem,"signatureid") %>'

Width="25" Height="25" />

</CellTemplate>

<Header Caption="Signature">

<RowLayoutColumnInfo OriginX="38" />

</Header>

<Footer>

<RowLayoutColumnInfo OriginX="38" />

</Footer>

</igtbl:TemplatedColumn>

As I described above, I had a problem with the data in the other cells in the grid not being available in the UpdateCell event (only the data in the updated cell was available). I discovered however, that the reason of this problem was, that I didn't enable viewstate tracking. The following text from the UltraGridCell help-page describes this:

The most common problem with creating an unbound grid is with cell values not being persisted after postback. This usually happens when viewstate tracking hasn't been turned on for the cell objects. Viewstate can be turned on or off for the cell, row, column and band objects to give fine grained control over how viewstate is tracked by the grid. The viewstate tracking is set by a parameter that is passed to object's constructor.

Now, I'm creating every cell with "new UltraGridCell(true); ", and now all data in the grid is available on update events.

Repopulating or re-binding the grid during an update event is very likely to make updates not function correctly.

Are you using the grid's built-in AJAX functionality?  This will make a big difference as to whether or not you can get a reference to other cells in the row, and what suggestions I can provide.

If you're using the grid's AJAX functionality, then only the information about the individual cell updated is available on the server.  If you want to access any information about other cells in the same row, you should use the UpdateRow event instead of UpdateCell.  If you want  updates to be triggered on a cell-by-cell basis anyway (rather than the row-by-row basis that UpdateRow uses), then handle the grid's client-side AfterCellUpdate event:

function UltraWebGrid1_AfterCellUpdateHandler(gridName, cellId)
{
    var cell = igtbl_getCellById(cellId);
    cell.Row.processUpdateRow();
}

If you're not using the grid's AJAX functionality, then you should have all of the row's data available even during UpdateCell.  If you need to repopulate or re-bind the grid in this circumstance after the updates are completed, do this in the grid's UpdateGrid event - this event is raised once after all UpdateCell/UpdateRow/AddRow/DeleteRow events (and their batch equivalents) have finished.

Vince, thanks for your response. I was a little too quick on posting my problem: After some debugging I found that my problem was not, that the hidden column didn't sort. The problem was instead, that I repopulated the grid before I used the value of the cell in the hidden column. I did this in the following lines in my UpdateCell eventhandler-method:

int rowIndex = e.Cell.Row.Index;
SetUpGrid(WebGrid1);
int ID = Convert.ToInt32(WebGrid1.Rows[rowIndex].Cells[0].Value);

The home-made SetUpGrid method reloads data to the unbound grid and when you call this method, the original sorting of the grid would be applied.

The reason for me doing the above lines of code is, that the event argument "e" only contains the value of the single cell that has been changed (that is, it doesn't contain the value of the hidden cell in column 0). I checked this by debugging and thereby viewing the value of the e.Cell.Row.Cells property, which only contained the value of the updated cell. Can I, in any way, get the value of the other cells in the row of the updated cell via the event argument without having to reload the grid? And is my explanation to complicated or what? :)