Adding command column to a jqGrid in Asp.Net MVC - asp.net-mvc

Question

I hope you have a good morning.
I'd like to use jqGrid in my Asp.Net app. So far, I've been producing an html table and converting it to a grid, but I'd like to try a better approach: loading the data via an AJAX call as it's supposed with the grid. I found out how to fetch data, but I'd like to have the "Edit" and "Delete" columns in addition to the data columns. How do I achieve it?
I'd rather not craft the html for the buttons in my controller. The ideal solution would be to send just the data, and have jqGrid add the required columns based on some client-side templates and the id values. I can't do it manually since I can't add columns to the existing grid. So, what do I do?
Update. I don't need just to achieve edit/delete functionality. What I need is to add a column with HTML based on some template and the "id" value, like [More details]

Answer 1

Sending pure data back from the server is the correct way if you use jqGrid.
To implement Row editing like you want look at the jqGrid Demo and choose on the left part "Row Editing" and then "Custom Edit". I personally prefer to use so named "inline editing" (choose on the same demo "Input types" under "Row Editing"). You implement switching in editing mode by double-click instead of selecting the row (see jqGrid - edit only certain rows for an editable column as an example). To delete the rows you can use additionally "Delete" button from the "form editing". To use it you should add Navigator with respect of navGrid method and choose with the corresponding parameters the buttons in the toolbar which you need. To see this on the demo choose "Live Data Manipulation" and then "Navigator".
UPDATED: In the jqGrid Demo, see "Row Editing" and then "Custom Edit" you can see how you can use setRowData inside of gridComplete or loadComplete handle to set ANY HTML code fragment. Why do you don't like the method? You can also use predefined showlink formatter to display a link or use custom formatter and custom unformatter to display any HTML contain in a jqGrid cell.

Answer 2

You probably figured it out by now, but for whatever is worth here is my answer using a custom formatter. The Action column is rendered using a custom formatter that shows a button that calls a simple javascript function.
$(document).ready(function () {
$("#all-errors-list").jqGrid({
url: '/Error/AllErrors/',
datatype: 'json',
mtype: 'GET',
colNames: ['Id', 'Error','Actions'],
colModel: [
{ name: 'Id', index: 'Id', width: 100, align: 'left', editable: true},
{ name: 'ErrorDetails', index: 'ErrorDetails', width: 350, align: 'left' },
{ name: 'ActionId', width:400, formatter: actionFormatter}
],
pager: '#all-errors-pager',
rowNum: 10,
rowList: [10, 20, 50],
sortname: 'Id',
sortorder: 'asc',
viewrecords: true,
imgpath: '<%=Html.ImagePath()%>',
caption: 'Open Errors',
height: "100%",
width: "100%",
gridComplete: function () { $("button").button(); }
})
function actionFormatter(cellvalue, options, rowObject) {
return "<button onclick=\"alert('" + cellvalue + "')\">Details</button>" ;
}
I hope that helps.