dynamic table generation

i'm trying to generate a table dynamically from information from the database, no problem until i get to rowspan i am having difficulty comming up with a solution to implement rowspan successfully.

here is what i have so far

db:

ID  | Row | Column | ColumnSpan | RowSpan
1   | 0   | 0      | 0          | 0
2   | 0   | 1      | 0          | 0
3   | 0   | 2      | 0          | 0
4   | 0   | 3      | 0          | 0
5   | 1   | 1      | 2          | 0
6   | 1   | 2      | 0          | 2
7   | 2   | 0      | 0          | 0
8   | 2   | 1      | 0          | 0
9   | 2   | 2      | 0          | 0
10  | 2   | 3      | 0          | 0

should generate something like
,-------------------,
|    |    |    |    |
`````````````````````
|    |         |
````````````````    `
|    |    |    |    |
`-------------------`

,-------------------,
|    |    |    |    |
`````````````````````
|    |         |
````````````````    `
|    |    |ERRO|    |
`-------------------`

devnull wrote:

i'm trying to generate a table dynamically from information from the database, no problem until i get to rowspan i am having difficulty comming up with a solution to implement rowspan successfully.

here is what i have so far

db:

ID  | Row | Column | ColumnSpan | RowSpan
1   | 0   | 0      | 0          | 0
2   | 0   | 1      | 0          | 0
3   | 0   | 2      | 0          | 0
4   | 0   | 3      | 0          | 0
5   | 1   | 1      | 2          | 0
6   | 1   | 2      | 0          | 2
7   | 2   | 0      | 0          | 0
8   | 2   | 1      | 0          | 0
9   | 2   | 2      | 0          | 0
10  | 2   | 3      | 0          | 0

should generate something like
,-------------------,
|    |    |    |    |
`````````````````````
|    |         |
````````````````    `
|    |    |    |    |
`-------------------`

loop through each record from the database
{
    check if currentRecord.Row < table.Rows && currentRecord.Column < table.Rows[currentRecord.Row].Cells
    {
       // do column span
       int spanTo = currentRecord.ColumnSpan;
       while (spanTo > 1)
       {
          t.Rows[currentRecord.Row].Cells.RemoveAt(currentRow.Column + 1) // keep removing the column next to the current
          spanTo -= 1;
       } // this works nicely, problem is the below rowspan code
   
       spanTo = currentRecord.RowSpan;
       while (spanTo > 1)
       {
          t.Rows[currentRecord.Row + 1].Cells.RemoveAt(currentRecord.Column); // so from the example above, ID=5 is spanned, ID6 gets column=2, when it tries to rowspan it looks up column=2 from the row below, which is not correct
          spanTo -= 1;
       }
    }
}

at the moment it ends up like this:

,-------------------,
|    |    |    |    |
`````````````````````
|    |         |
````````````````    `
|    |    |ERRO|    |
`-------------------`

maybe im going about this the wrong way, any ideas on how i can implement something like this?

thanks

cool that would be great.

i got it working, im sure there's a better way to do this, but here is the code for anyone else that might be interested

int spanTo = currentRecord.RowSpan;
currentCell.RowSpan = spanTo;

int colToRemove = currentColIndex; // by default we will remove the current column
if (currentColIndex > 0) // if its > 0 we need to check if the cell before this has been spanned
{
    int prevColSpan = t.Rows[currentRowIndex].Cells[currentColIndex - 1].ColumnSpan;
    if (prevColSpan > 1)
    {
        colToRemove = currentColIndex + (prevColSpan - 1); // colspan is 1 based index so -1
    }
}

while (spanTo > 1) // keep removing columns from rows below the current row
{
    int currentRow = currentRowIndex + (spanTo - 1); // span the last row and move backwards
    if (t.Rows[currentRow].Cells.Count < colToRemove) // must be spanned or missing columns?
    {
        colToRemove = t.Rows[currentRow].Cells.Count - 1;
    }

    t.Rows[currentRow].Cells.RemoveAt(colToRemove);
    spanTo -= 1;
}