How to write a BLL for generic GridView sorting that applies
for any GridViews

I have a number of Web pages that contain GridView in each (each GridView has
different columns and is pupulated from different tables.) I want to write a
generalized BLL that handled sorting of any Gridview in these Web Pages. I know
many examples of BLL handling GridView sorting through ObjectDataSource; but the
BLL in these example handles each GridView (and its clumns) individually.  I
don't want to handle individual columns of each GridView in the BLL for sorting
purposes. How can I do this? Can I pass the GridView ID to the BLL so it can
handle the sorting within BLL? 

Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

sg2000

You can sort your data before you bind it to your gridview when you retrieve the
data based on some parameters.

GridView1.DataSource = BL.GetData(sortfield, sortdirection);
GridView1.DataBind();

You will then retrieve the data from the datalayer, sort it on the given
parameters and return the sorted data used as datasource.

Thanks littlefool for the response. However, how can I access GridView1 (which
is defined in the aspx) from within a separate class (the BLL)? Appreciate any
suggestions. Thanks.

sg2000

I would not do this. The code I showed was viewed from the aspx point of view.
The BL.GetData is the business layer that returns an object that can be used as
the DataSource, such as a List or DataSet. 

So, the Business layer would look something like this:

        public List<MyObject> GetData(string sortfield, string
sortdirection)
        {
            DataLayer dl = new DataLayer();
            // assume the datalayer returns a generic list. It can also be a
DataSet or any other data collection you use
            List<MyObject> data = dl.GetData();
            // you should add the sort logic here depending on what data source
you return
            // for business objects you probably need to have an IComparer class
that will 
            //  compare all your objects depending on your parameters.
            data.Sort(); // sorting the data collection
            return data;
        }

Thanks littlefool for the BLL code. Yes, this would work. My question is: if you
use ObjectDataSource in your aspx to populate your gridview, how can you send
the sortfield and sortdirection as parameters of the GetData?

Thanks again,

sg2000