How to free your Data View/Form web part (DVWP/DFWP) from those nasty GUIDs

Ever wanted to use the same page layout containing a DFWP, and bind it to a local site list in each site of your site collection ?

Ever want to be able to deploy a page with a DFWP to a different server?

If you ever tried any of the above using SharePoint Designer you would have found problems because, by default, SharePoint Designer binds the control to the list instance using the list instance GUID. To resolve this we need to replace the GUIDs by the list name. The steps to do this are:

1. On the attributes of the DataFormWebPart element replace the attribute ListName="{GUID}" by ListName="LIST_NAME" where LIST_NAME is the name of the list that you are binding to.
2. Go through all of the DataFormParameter elements and replace:
   
   

   <WebPartPages:DataFormParameter Name="ListID" ParameterKey="ListID" 
    PropertyName="ParameterValues" DefaultValue="{GUID}"/>

   
   with:
   

   <WebPartPages:DataFormParameter Name="ListName" ParameterKey="ListName"
    PropertyName="ParameterValues" DefaultValue="LIST_NAME"/>

3. Go to the ParameterBindings element and replace
   
   

   <ParameterBinding Name="ListID" Location="None" DefaultValue="{GUID}"/>

   
   

   with:

   <ParameterBinding Name="ListName" Location="None" DefaultValue="LIST_NAME"/>