A New Blazor Grid Control (Preview) is Available in v21.1

If you install v21.1 or visit our website after official release, you will notice a second Blazor Grid component in our product lineup (available as a CTP). In this blog post, we'll explain why we introduced a new Grid control, what "CTP" means, and what you can expect in the future from both controls.

Why We Decided to Develop a New Blazor Grid Component

Simply said, we ran into major limitations with our current Blazor Data Grid, DxDataGrid.

Our new Blazor Grid control, DxGrid, will allow us to deliver the features you have been waiting for: improved editing, grouping, and more.

Of course, we would have preferred to simply modify our current grid but unfortunately, this was not an option. We quickly discovered that rewriting the core created its own set of issues. Bottom line - the better choice was to leave the current control in a stable state and introduce a migration path to the new component for those interested in our new Grid.

Rest assured, while this is a new native Blazor Grid component, under the hood, it uses our proven .NET Core Data libraries. The same libraries we use with our many other .NET Core Grids.

We are confident that our new Blazor Grid will bring you the features and performance that you've come to expect from DevExpress Data Grids.

"CTP" and Feature Parity with our Existing Control

Our new Blazor Grid control is available as a Preview (CTP) in v21.1. This simply means that the control is not yet ready to fully replace the existing control – it still lacks a few features. Here's how the controls currently compare:

When Should You Switch to the New Control?

If the current feature list suits your requirements, you can switch now. We expect both controls to be stable and advise you to make your decision based on our published feature set.

We plan to add the following features to the new control in upcoming v21.1 minor updates:

• Filter Row and Criteria Operator support
• Row Selection
• Data Editing

We also expect to officially launch the product in our v21.2 release cycle. Our hope is to add the following features by our v21.2 release:

• Scrolling
• Master-detail support

It's hard to predict the date for complete feature parity, but right now we estimate this to be the v22.1 release.

How to Switch

You can use the new control's demos and documentation to learn about its capabilities and related API. If you need assistance, feel free to contact our support team. We're happy to help.

Our team is working on a detailed migration guide document that will help with the transition process. We expect to make it available in upcoming minor updates.

Our Plans for the Original Blazor Data Grid

Going forward, we will focus the majority of our efforts on the new control, but we will continue to support and maintain our original Grid control. Here are a few features we expect to incorporate in our original grid over the next few months:

• Support "Display" data annotation attribute in data columns
• Implement Header Text template for columns
• Implement a confirmation dialog for delete operations
• Add CssClass, HeaderTextAlignment properties to a column
• Add API that customizes a column's default editor
• Add API settings to customize Popup Edit Form and control its behavior
• Add a Show method to display the Column Chooser next to any UI element

We estimate that the transition period will take about a year, so our original grid will remain in our distribution until v22.1 or v22.2.

Let Us Know If You Have Any Questions

Please contact our Support team or leave a comment below if you have any questions about this transition.