I can never remember the syntax to format a string when using the Eval statement, so once and for all I decided to try and commit it to memory by writing it down here.
In a DataBound control, you can use Eval to evaluate a public property on the DataItem that is being bound to the control. For example, if your DataItem has a public property called Name, you may use this statement to output the value of the property:
<%# Eval("Name") %>
The Eval method also has an overload which takes a format string. So far as I can figure, this format string is used in a similar vain to String.Format, whereby you supply the formatting string by numbered parameters. (Aside: The numbering system seems pretty pointless to me, since you’d almost always have only a single parameter to pass, wouldn’t you?).
Anyway – to get to the point – you can use the format string as follows: Presuming your DataItem has a property called “StartDate” which returns a DateTime, you can format the DateTime in the format “1 Nov 2006″ using the following code:
<%# Eval("StartDate", "{0:dd MMM yyyy}") %>
