Best way to implement a read and write for an unknown amount of rows

I asked a question similarly, but the outcome was pretty messy and I was having difficulties populating so I'm trying to go at from a different angle: Question concerning asp:listview and multiple dynamically created controls

I have a table which stores steps in a process. Some companies only have 6 steps while others have 15, so I created a table with 15 different slots for steps. What I would like to do is set up a control that displays each step in its own 开发者_开发问答row with a label next to it saying "Step '#'", and not in an adjacent column. I'd also like for it to not display any blank rows. If they are entering the step instructions, I would want for them to have to press a button that would add a row so that they aren't just given 15 empty text boxes to fill in.

What would be the best control to do this in, and how would I get started in setting it up?

You are putting data in the field names in the table, which makes your task more complicated. Instead of storing the steps in columns, like this:

CompanyId  Step1  Step2  Step3  Step4  Step5  Step 6  Step7 ...
1          alpha  beta   gamma
2          one    two    three  four   five

You should store the steps as rows, so that you get the step number as data in a field:

CompanyId  StepNumber  Step
1          1           alpha
1          2           beta
1          3           gamma
2          1           one
2          2           two
2          3           three
2          4           four
2          5           five

This way you don't get any unused fields, and the data model doesn't pose any limitation on the number of steps. Also, you can easily get the steps as a collection instead of having to get each one separately and add to a collection.

Something like:

var steps =
  from s in CompanySteps
  where s.CompanyId = 2
  orderby s.StepNumber
  select new { s.StepNumber, s.Step };

Then you have many different options to display the steps, like using the collection as data source in a Repeater, or loop through the items and just create HTML code for them and put in a Literal control.