Kettic toolbar UI component library is developed and designed to provide the best user experience, and that is why we have integrated the data binding functionality for it, as it might be quite helpful when developers have the need to associate the toolbar item with a certain data source in your database.

In this page, we will introduce to you the data binding capacity, including which toolbar properties you can set for data binding, what data types are supported for binding, and how you can bind your toolbar items to the data source.

Before we get to the part to bind your toolbar with a certain data source, first let's get familiar with a few properties related to toolbar data binding, some of them are mandatory while some are not. Web developers can customize these properties according your project requirements.

• DataSource: This property is mandatory when developers use it to bind a toolbar to specific data source at runtime.
• DataSource: This property is mandatory when developers use it to bind a toolbar to specific data source at runtime.
• DataMember: If you are usin g DataSet as your data source, the toolbar is bound to first DataTable unless you have set this DataMember property.
• DataTextField: By setting this property, developers can bind a certain data source to your toolbar Text property.
• DataValueField: By setting this property, developers can bind a certain data source to your toolbar Value property.
• DataBind: This property is mandatory when you are data binding at runtime, after you are done customizing the properties mentioned above.

To begin with, Kettic ToolBar UI control supports data binding to Array or ArrayList. You can get your toolbar integrated into your ASP.NET web application first, and then easily bind it to an object-based data source, for example, ObjectDataSource, or any other class which implements IEnumerable interface.

Alternatively, web developers can also opt for data binding your toolbar control or button items to DataTable. In the corresponding demo page, you will find complete aspx along with Visual C# / VB.NET sample codes for this process and you can feel free to copy to your project for evaluation.

In addition, this toolbar control also supports ASP.NET DataSource such as SqlDataSource. This is relatively easy to do as developers only need to set the DataSourceID property, which we have introduced in the sections above. Please note that you also need to set the DataTextField and DataValueField proeorties of your toolbar so that you can bind your toolbar Text and Value to specified data source.

Programmers can also try data binding your toolbar control or button items to XMLDataSource or an XML file in a Visual C# / Visual Basic .NET ASP.NET AJAX web application. Similar to binding to SqlDataSource, you only need to set the three properties and it is done.

Toolbar data binding to LinqDataSource is also a piece of cake with this easy to use UI control provided by Kettic. Just configure the three properties and there you go. One thing you should note is that currently this toolbar control supports only non-hierarchical structure, so please provide proper data source accordingly.