ASP.NET GridRow - Get Cell when you don't know the index - using HeaderText, DataField, SortExpression etc.

Sometimes you want to reference a cell in a gridview row, but you don't know its ordinal index, so Row.Cells[x] is no good for you. In this circumstance it would be nice to say something like "just get me the cell from the column with the HeaderText value 'Price'".

Voila:

       public static int GetCellIndexByFieldHandle(this GridView grid, string fieldHandle)
        {
            int iCellIndex = -1;

            for (int iColIndex = 0; iColIndex < grid.Columns.Count; iColIndex++)
            {
                if (grid.Columns[iColIndex] is DataControlField)
                {
                    DataControlField col = (DataControlField)grid.Columns[iColIndex];
                    if ((col is BoundField && string.Compare(((BoundField)col).DataField, fieldHandle, true) == 0)
                        || string.Compare(col.SortExpression, fieldHandle, true) == 0
                        || col.HeaderText.Contains(fieldHandle))
                    {
                        iCellIndex = iColIndex;
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
            return iCellIndex;
        }

Usage:

   void myGrid_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
        {
             TableCell cellPrice = e.Row.Cells[e.Row.GetCellIndexByFieldHandle('Price')];
        }
    }

The method works for column HeaderText, DataField and SortExpression, so you should always have a way to grab hold of that cell. One caveat - it can't reference AutoGenerated columns. They have to be defined in the GridView template a la:

<Columns>
     <asp:BoundField DataField="Price" />
</Columns>

or

<Columns>
    <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Price">
    <ItemTemplate>
        <asp:Label ID="lblPrice" runat="server" />
    </ItemTemplate>
    </asp:TemplateField>  
</Columns>