How to free your Data View Web Part (DVWP) from those nasty GUIDs

Ever want to use the same page layout containing a DVWP, 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 DVWP to a different server?

If you ever tried any of the above using the SharePoint Designer DataViewWebPart you would have found problems because, by default, SharePointDesigner 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"/>    

This should give you a GUID free DVWP that can be placed on a page layout used by multiple sites on your site collection (as long as the name of the list is the same on all sites).