How to get a ADO.Net Datatable from a Feature Layer?

Question

Howdy All,
    The title kinda says it all or more correctly asks it all...  I've have been pulling my hair out trying to get either a feature layers table or a particular selected feature attributes into a datatable so that I can display it in a datagridview...  The couple of examples that I've found are either incomplete and won't compile, or are for Arc Engine...  My environment is:

Current Environment:
ArcMap 10.0 Service Pack 3, ArcInfo license level
ArcObjects SDK, Service Pack 1
Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Service Pack 1
VB.Net

Working on an ArcMap Add-In.  
In the project I have a form in which the users will "cycle" through the selected features of a layer and edit a few attributes as needed.  I would like to present the sttributes via a datagridview.  which is more preferrable over individual attributes in a textbox.

Any clues???

Thanks in advance,
Kevin Orcutt

JamesCrandall · Answer

Hello James,
    Thank you for your input.  I saw your response over on the page with your download, and figured out what to do...   Works great now...  One would figure that ESRI would have something along these lines, but I couldn't find it...

Thanks again,
Kevin Orcutt

Hey, that's great to hear!

The majority of my projects/implementations nowadays is about spatial and non-spatial database integration, so that means lots and lots of ADO.NET and Transact-SQL.  Also, and this is just from my own experience, building GIS solutions with an n-Tier architecture/approach has been very beneficial and I'd recommend looking into it.  Basically, I just veiw/treat ArcGIS as any other UI (but one that comes with very powerful spatial data processing) -- thus having the n-Tier architecture allows me to integrate other layers and databases.

Spend some time over at MSDN and look into some of the patterns & practices approaches to software design.  This article is a bit dated but the basic ideas still apply:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973279.aspx

KevinOrcutt · Answer

Hello James,
    Thank you for your input.  I saw your response over on the page with your download, and figured out what to do...   Works great now...  One would figure that ESRI would have something along these lines, but I couldn't find it...

Thanks again,
Kevin Orcutt

JamesCrandall · Answer

Kevin,

I just realized that you commented on the download page of the CodeGallery where I make the vbproj and class available.  To answer your question, after you download it:

1. Extract the files.
2. Disregard the vbproj file.  After the new Code Gallery switch, this seems to have gotten corrupted.
3. Not a big deal, in your current assembly/vb project's Solution Explorer window, right click the project and choose "Add", then "Existing Item".
4. Navigate to where you extracted the downloaded files and select the DatTabConverter class file.  This will add the code to your project.

You can simply reference the class to access the ConvertToADONETDataTableFromLayer function, or just copy and paste into your own classes.

Good luck and let me know if you need more assistance.  Thanks for downloading!