A field or property with the name was not found on the selected data source

Question

I have an Entity Data Model with two entities in it "Roles" and "Users". There is a navigation property from I have a EntityDataSource and a GridView. The EntityDataSource points to the Users entity and has an Include="Roles" parameter.

I've added a BoundField in the GridView that points to RoleName, a property of the entity Roles. However, when I execute the code I get the above error.

I have used very similar code successfully in another application. Any ideas why this isn't working?

Here is my EntityDataSource:

    <asp:EntityDataSource ID="EntityDataSource1" runat="server" 
    ConnectionString="name=pbu_checklistEntities" 
    DefaultContainerName="pbu_checklistEntities" EnableDelete="True" 
    EnableFlattening="False" EnableUpdate="True" EntitySetName="Users" Include="Role">
    </asp:EntityDataSource>

And here is the BoundField:

<asp:BoundField DataField="RoleName" HeaderText="Role" SortExpression="RoleName" />

Solution

You cannot use an asp:BoundField for a property of a related navigation property. You can only use an asp:TemplateField and then bind it as readonly with Eval (not Bind). BoundFields are always using Bind internally, that's the reason why it doesn't work. I had to figure this out myself some time ago:

Columns of two related database tables in one ASP.NET GridView with EntityDataSource

Comments

[Dave Mackey]

Thanks! That is a great help.

[pseudocoder]

The linked question addresses the issue more generally but +1 for this question and answer since it came up in my search--the question is more directly related to the answer.

[John Bledsoe]

This only seems to be true in IIS 6 and not IIS 7. Can anyone confirm or deny this difference?

[Emeka]

Yes John Bledsoe, I only ran in to this issue when trying to deploy a project I had developed on VS 2013/IIS 7 on a VS 2010/IIS 6 setup. I had no issues when testing in my VS 2013/IIS 7 environment. Converting everything to TemplateFields worked for me.