Which datagrid to use for ASP.NET MVC2 project?

Question

I am developing a commercial MVC2 app that requires a grid that has callback update in some form to support 10,000+ rows. It should also support relatively rich content (icons, multiline descriptions etc). Although it requires the usual paging/scrolling/sorting features it does not need support for grouping. So nothing that special.

The commercial grids I looked at were Component Art and Telerik which both look pretty good but may be a little OTT for what I need. They are also $800 and $999 respectively (1 developer).

I've also looked at jqGrid and the grid from MvcContrib. These appear ok but for a commercial app I am concerned that these may be risky options - though could be wrong there.

I'd really appreciate any views/exprience on either the above grids or perhaps you can suggest a better option/approach.

FYI I am using EF4 and C#.

Answer 1

I have quite a bit of experience with jqGrid, the grids from DevExpress and telerik, as well as ExtJS. By far, my favorite of the bunch is jqGrid. I'm not concerned with lack of support or the project going away. They had just recently introduced a redesigned grid for use with MVC: http://www.trirand.com/blog/?p=639

telerik and DevExpress are both excellent in their own way. A friend of mine has had issues with the eventing model of the telerik grid, and I've experienced quite a bit of 'html bloat' from the DevExpress grid. telerik has great support for doing things like reordering columns on the client side, while the DevExpress grid requires a call back to do this.

ExtJS is wonderful, but I really feel that it is a very heavy JavaScript grid. Performance in IE can be dreadful with the ExtJS grid. It generally performs well if you do not have a lot of columns, or do not try and put more than one grid on a page. You'll want to definitely avoid putting the ExtJS grids into Tab controls, as all sorts of issues arise when the grid is rendered to a non visible element.

We've actually just recently decided to switch all of the grids used in our reporting system over to telerik's Silverlight grids, which perform beautifully compared to their JavaScript counterparts.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

Answer 2

Honestly, you can develop your own with MVC rather easily giving you all that you need. Though I suppose if you need something quick that works, the MvcContrib grid is great.

Answer 3

give a look to the datagrid of the MVC Controls Toolkit. It appears quite flexible. It allows editing, deletions, insertions and paging. Moreover it is really easy to move the changes to a DB in the controller. Look at it here.