Using StringBuilder with DataSet to build dynamic table

Question

I'm using StringBuilder to dynamically contruct a table from a DataSet. It's in two parts, one to create the labels and their dimensions and column order. This part I have working already. What I'm stuck on is how to get the columns that have "values" then append the string to finish building the table.

There are 25 columns but typically the table with only have 17 or so. I also need to filter out the first column. I'm having trouble conceiving how to do this. This is what I have so far. All it does is pull out the first value in the DS. I can change the index number as well but in this case I can't really do that since the number and index of each column is unknown.

            DataSet valuesSet = getBlendInfo.GetProcessValues(reqID);

            foreach (DataRow dRow in valuesSet.Tables[0].Rows)
            {
                tblString.Append("<td>");
                tblString.Append(dRow[0].ToString());
                tblString.Append("</td>");
            }

Answer 1

you just need to use a nested loop, something like this:

foreach (DataRow row in table.Rows)
{
    tblString.Append("<tr>");

    for (int i = 0; i < table.Columns.Count; i++)
    {
        tblString.Append("<td>");
        tblString.Append(row[i].ToString());
        tblString.Append("</td>");
    }

    tblString.Append("</tr>");
}

check for null before reading from row[i]

Answer 2

Try:

DataSet valuesSet = getBlendInfo.GetProcessValues(reqID);
foreach (DataRow dRow in valuesSet.Tables[0].Rows)
{
    bool firstColumn = true;
    foreach (DataColumn dbColumn in valuesSet.Tables[0].Columns)
    {
        if (firstColumn)
            firstColumn = false;
        else
        {
            tblString.Append("<td>");
            tblString.Append(dRow[dbColumn].ToString());
            tblString.Append("</td>");
        }
    }
}