Intro 

Setting up the Template

The template file should contain data markers following proper data marker syntax. Each copy of a given data marker will be populated with the same value. If the data marker appears in a table row or list entry, nothing will be automatically repeated if only one row is imported.

Binding Data

PowerPointTemplate has a single method for binding data to the data markers that are located in the template: {{[PowerPointTemplate.BindData]}}. Depending on the data source type and the number of rows in the data source, PowerPointWriter will either import a single row of data or [import multiple rows|Importing Multiple Rows of Data].

There are several ways to import a single row of data into a presentation:

1. Use a single dimensional array
2.  Use a multi-dimensional data source AND
   1. The data source only has one row of data
   2.  {{[DataBindingProperties.MaxRowsToImport]}} is set to 1

Single Dimensional Arrays

Arrays don't have built-in means to store column names. The user must specify the column names in a string array that is passed to {{PowerPointTemplate.BindData}} at run time.

            PowerPointTemplate pptt = new PowerPointTemplate();
            pptt.Open(@"C:\DataBinding\ArrayBindingTemplate.pptx");

            string[] values = {"Hello World", "subtitle"};
            string[] colNames = {"header", "subtitle"};
            DataBindingProperties DataProps = pptt.CreateDataBindingProperties();

            pptt.BindData(values, colNames, "DataSource1", DataProps);
            pptt.Process();
            pptt.Save(Page.Response,
               "ArrayBinding.pptx",
               false);

		Dim pptt As New PowerPointTemplate();
		pptt.Open("C:\DataBinding\ArrayBindingTemplate.pptx")
 
		Dim values = New String() {"Hello World", "subtitle"}
		Dim colNames = New String() {"header", "subtitle"}


		Dim DataProps As DataBindingProperites = pptt.CreateDataBindingProperties()
		pptt.BindData(values, colnames, "DataSource1", DataProps)
		pptt.Process()
		pptt.Save(Page.Repponse, "ArrayBinding.pptx", False)

Multi-dimensional data sources

If a multi-dimensional data source has only one row of data, the automatic repeating behavior will not occur. This is consistent for any of the multi-dimensional data sources supported by [BindData|PowerPointTemplate.BindData]:

•  Jagged and multi-dimensional arrays 
•  Custom objects (IEnumerable<T>) 
•  System.IDataReader and System.DataTable

Setting MaxRowsToImport to 1

MaxRowsToImport is a property on the [DataBindingProperties] object that can be used to limit the number of rows that are imported, regardless of how many rows are actually in the data source.

DataBindingProperties dataProps = ppt.CreateDataBindingProperties();
dataProps.MaxRowsToImport = 1;
ppt.BindData(getDataTable(), "DataSourceName", dataProps);