Select a row on GridView

There are many ways to select a row and perform whatever actions you desire in GridView. The easiest is to let its CommandField generate the select button and use the SelectedIndexChanging and SelectedIndexChanged events for the actions desired.

    <asp:CommandField ShowSelectButton="true" />

However, it would be more elegant if you can just select the row. 3 steps needed in order to achieve that:

Step 1: Add the SELECT command in RowDataBound event to each row (Assuming the ID of your GridView is “myGridView“)

    protected void PeopleGridView_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
        {
            // Just adding styles and effects
            e.Row.Attributes["onmouseover"] = "this.style.cursor='hand';this.style.textDecoration='underline';";
            e.Row.Attributes["onmouseout"] = "this.style.textDecoration='none';";

            e.Row.Attributes["onclick"] = ClientScript.GetPostBackClientHyperlink(this.myGridView, "Select$" + e.Row.RowIndex);
        }
    }

Step 2: Register these SELECT commands in Render to avoid the Event Validation errors

    protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < this.myGridView.Rows.Count; i++)
        {
            Page.ClientScript.RegisterForEventValidation(this.myGridView.UniqueID, "Select$" + i);
        }
        base.Render(writer);
    }

Step 3: Use the SelectedIndexChanging and SelectedIndexChanged events for the actions desired