It would be nice if our block would take you to the person's details when you click a name, right? Let's make that happen.

Step 1 - Add an event handler to the grid

First we'll set an event handler named gPeople_RowSelected for the OnRowSelected property of the grid. We also need to let the grid know that the Id property of an item in the grid represents the key/identifier for the item in each row. We do this by adding DataKeyNames="Id" to the grid's markup. We'll use the key value when we handle the OnRowSelected event in our code.

<Rock:Grid ID="gPeople" runat="server" AllowSorting="true"
    OnRowSelected="gPeople_RowSelected" DataKeyNames="Id">

Step 2 - Handle that event in code

Now we can write code to do something when a particular row is clicked. Since Rock already has a page with a named route "~/Person/{0}" for viewing a person's details, all we need to do is take the person's Id (for the selected row's key) and redirect to the route.

Edit the *.cs file and add this event handler:

protected void gPeople_RowSelected( object sender, RowEventArgs e )
{
    int personId = (int)e.RowKeyValues["Id"];
    Response.Redirect( string.Format( "~/Person/{0}", personId ), false );

    // prevents .NET from quietly throwing ThreadAbortException
    Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest();
    return;
}

That's all there is to it!

That was a bit too easy. What will you do when there is no named route available? Let's try a different, configuration based approach for those cases. Yep, you guessed it. Another block property attribute to the rescue.

Step 2 redux - Use a LinkedPage block property

It's a common situation to link your block to another page where a related block lives. By adding the LinkedPage attribute to your block, the administrator can wire up your block to the page of their choosing.

[LinkedPage( "Related Page" ) ]

LinkedPage block property

The string "Related Page" is the attribute name and its key is just "RelatedPage".

Change your gPeople_RowSelected handler to call the special NavigateToLinkedPage() method and pass in the attribute key that has the linked page, the name of a query string parameter and the value for that parameter. Since we're expecting the admin to link the block to the Person Profile page, we'll use the PersonId as the parameter and the person's Id will be the parameter value.

Our code would look like this:

protected void gPeople_RowSelected( object sender, RowEventArgs e )
{
    NavigateToLinkedPage( "RelatedPage", "PersonId", (int)e.RowKeyValues["Id"] );
}

Rock will automatically build a redirect link in the form of .../Page/[id-of-related-page]?PersonId=[id-of-selected-person] (E.g. http://rock.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/page/93?PersonId=2)

And yes, I tricked you because this new event handler code is even easier than the previous code.