How to create thead and tbody in ASP.NET Table ?

Question

How to create thead and tbody in ASP.NET Table? I need those tags because of jquery and asp.net gives me only tr, th and td.

Answer 1

Frédéric's answer is not accurate. asp:Table DOES in fact support <tbody> and <thead> tags, but in a less obvious fashion than HtmlTable.

UseAccessibleHeader is true by default for tables, which means your header rows will be rendered properly with <th> instead of <td>, but to get the <tbody> and <thead> tags, you've just got to set some voodoo at Page_Load and when you're creating/inserting your rows in the codebehind.

Here's my example asp:Table markup:

<asp:Table runat="server" ID="tblGeneral">
    <asp:TableHeaderRow ID="TableHeaderRow1" runat="server">
        <asp:TableHeaderCell ID="TableHeaderCell1" runat="server">Column 1</asp:TableHeaderCell>
        <asp:TableHeaderCell ID="TableHeaderCell2" runat="server">Column 2</asp:TableHeaderCell>
        <asp:TableHeaderCell ID="TableHeaderCell3" runat="server">Column 3</asp:TableHeaderCell>
        <asp:TableHeaderCell ID="TableHeaderCell4" runat="server">Column 4</asp:TableHeaderCell>
        <asp:TableHeaderCell ID="TableHeaderCell5" runat="server">Column 5</asp:TableHeaderCell>
    </asp:TableHeaderRow>
</asp:Table>

At Page_Load, we specify that our TableHeaderRow1 should be a TableHeader:

Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
    TableHeaderRow1.TableSection = TableRowSection.TableHeader      
End Sub

And finally, in your function that inserts rows into said table, you just have to specify that the TableRowSection of each row you add is a TableBody:

Dim row As TableRow
Dim dvRow As Data.DataRowView

For Each dvRow In dv
    row = New TableRow
    row.TableSection = TableRowSection.TableBody 'THIS is the important bit
    cell = New TableCell
    Col1Stuff = New Label
    Col1Stuff.Text = "Blah"
    cell.Controls.Add(Col1Stuff)
    row.Cells.Add(cell)

    ...

tblGeneral.Rows.Add(row)
Next

You can do more reading on the TableRowSection property; looks like you can also accomplish this with your asp:Table template.

Answer 2

asp:Table does not support these elements.

Update: As jameh's answer reveals, the sentence above is completely wrong: the TableSection property allows to control whether a given row goes into the table's header, body or footer.

To elaborate on his answer, it seems you can even achieve this declaratively by setting the TableSection property in your markup, without code behind:

<asp:Table id="yourId" runat="server">
    <asp:TableHeaderRow TableSection="TableHeader">
        <!-- ... -->
    </asp:TableHeaderRow>
    <asp:TableRow>
        <!-- 'TableSection' defaults to 'TableRowSection.TableBody'. -->
        <!-- ... -->
    </asp:TableRow>
    <asp:TableRow TableSection="TableFooter">
        <!-- ... -->
    </asp:TableRow>
</asp:Table>

---

Original, now moot answer follows:

You might want to try the HtmlTable class instead:

<table id="yourId" runat="server">
    <thead>
        .
        .
        .
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        .
        .
        .
    </tbody>
</table>