I'm trying to persist the contents of a textbox through a postback, and I've exhausted all of my effort but can't get it working right.
What should happen is:
User selects a radiobutton
Depending which button was
selection, a usercontrol is loaded
to specify some data and a viewstate
to say which enum type it's
equivalent to.
When they click
save, if the UserControl is just a
textbox input - the simplest), the
contents are read and saved, then
saved to the database with the
format(the radiobutton choice) so
they can be deserialized again
later.
The page posts back, and
the value and format are read from
the database, then the right control
is loaded.
The problem is - the first time the page posts back, it works. Every other postback it resets to the default value of the textbox.
I have a very similar setup elsewhere, so I'm thinking it might be a minor thing I'd never think of. There's a lot of code, so it might be easier to talk about what to do (load the dynamic control, populate the values etc) rather than how to do it.
There was actually a bug in my original code which meant it would never have in the way I was using the modified version. Apparently state is restored in Page_Load, so any controls need to be initialized by to have their values restored.
Creating the control in Page_PreLoad, then populating it after Page_Load solved the problem.
Related
First off, I have managed to create a web application where my dynamically created user controls are recreated and repopulated with the correct information upon postback. I am not sure what my problem is, but i hope that you will be able to help me figure it out based on my situation:
On my page i enter the number of controls to be created into a hardcoded textbox (its on the aspx page) and click the okay butten. This in turn, creates the specified number of user controls dynamically using c# in the background.
So far the desired number of dynamic controls are in a table on the page.
Next...
I have 1 textbox and 4 dropboxes on each dynamic user control. When i type a company name into the textbox field and press enter or click away (on text changed event) it autoposts back and the textbox retains the company name that i have typed in.
Based on this string the dropboxes are populated from the database. Now when i select the desired items from the dropboxes and click on the save button (located outside of the dynamic controls, on the page) it does an insert to the database, but it turns out that upon this postback the indexes from the dropboxes have been reset and the wrong values get inserted.
The following pictures show firstly, how it should be and then how it is.
Basically the company name remains in the textbox of the dynamic control, but the information i choose from the dropbox resets to the first index.
It's hard to tell what happend without code, but this is a common mistake:
If you fill/create the dropdownlist controls in the page load event and you post back, the code will refill/recreate the controls. That's why you have to use something like If(!IsPostBack) in your page load event. Otherwise it will execute that code everytime you do a postback and actually just want to execute the code in your event handler for that button.
If you're dynamically creating the controls, make sure to do that in the Page_Init event. Dynamic controls have to be recreated on every postback. Their state is restored after the Page_Init (if it is a postback), so make sure to only set their values in Page_Load if you want to overwrite them.
Assuming that I can't modify the code-behind file for a site (it's a compiled site), I've encountered a bug of mine that can only be fully fixed with a complete recompile and redeployment. Unfortunately, we are on a strict release schedule and we can't deploy for another 11 days.
The bug is that I'm doing a check on a drop down to make sure that the value that is selected isn't "-1". However, I didn't use drp.SelectedItem.Value, I used drp.Items[0].Value. Total bonehead move on my part. The bottom line is that drp.Items[0].Value is ALWAYS -1, so they page gives an error to the user stating that they need to choose an option for that drop down. Which they really have, but my bug is not letting them continue in this process.
Because I'm an idiot.
So, I'm trying to determine if I could, client-side, replace the value of the first drp item to the actually chosen value of that drop down.
I've gotten this all to work client-side, but when the form is posted back, the value is still the value that was populated from code, meaning "-1".
I'm sure this is because the drop down is loaded and all the values are held in ViewState.
Can anyone think of a .Net friendly solution to this? I'm really hoping there is one.
Unfortunately, when browser makes the postback, all controls are recreated with default values and then update their values from viewstate and post values. And DropDownList control doesn't update ListItems' values from another collection of values. If we change ListItem's value on client side by javascript, at server side our control will contain default values in its collection of ListItem, in our case it's -1.
Best regards,
Dima.
How can use a dropdown list without the autopostback=true.
The value on the server is not being changed according to the one selected from the client side. As I already stated I do not wish that for each dropdown I have the autopostback will trigger a post back.
Any time I have lost the value of the drop-down it is because I messed up and repopulated the drop down before handling the value change. For me, it has been drop-downs that I need to do something special with like add item attributes for Javascript, etc. This is data that needs to be added on every page load (aka data that is not persisted in the drop down like the names and values of each item). In these cases I have done this work on load, then I try to retrieve the value later in the page lifecycle and DOH!
Here is the page lifecycle:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178472.aspx
Dollars to donuts that is what is happening. You are probably just reloading the items before you get to handling whatever postback event you are using to grab the value. If you are doing this and cannot get around this work flow, just save the selected index at the beginning of the logic that populates the drop-down, then set the selected index of the drop down with that value when done.
it'll be saved in the viewstate, so the value will be correct when you do eventually post back, and if you're really desperate to get the current value without a postback, javascript would be the way to do this.
Worst case you can grab the value right off the request object:
string selectedID = Request[DropdownControl.UniqueID];
You should make sure you are only filling the select box with options during the initial page load, and not again during the postback
if (!this.Page.IsPostBack) {
//fill select box here
}
using c# (asp.net)
i'm programmatically creating several drop down lists (random number).
the user selects a particular value from each list and i need to save the user selected value.
if i try to save the data to session state by using a button click event it says the drop down list object hasn't been created. (obviously cuz i'm creating the drop down lists in the page load event under !IsPostBack.)
if i try to save the data to session state in the page load event under IsPostBack i only get the first value from each list. (obviously cuz when the page is recreated after the postback, the drop down lists have been recreated and the user entered data is lost).
How do i save the user selected value from the drop down lists when a button is clicked?
i'm doing this in the code behind file.
As John Saunders said, you have to recreate all of your DropDownList controls on every postback. Additionally, you have to create them before state is restored. That means that "under !IsPostBack" in the page load event is already too late. Move it up to Page Init.
You have to recreate all of the dropdowns on every postback.
Personally (without the ability to switch to MVC) I would consider getting rid of the postbacks altogether and reading the values back directly from a standard HTTP POST request.
The implementation of dynamic controls with postbacks often ends up rather convoluted and difficult to follow
I have several "ASP:TextBox" controls on a form (about 20).
When the form loads, the text boxes are populated from a database.
The user can change the populated values, and when they submit the form, I take the values posted to the server and conditionally save them (determined by some business logic).
All but 1 of the text boxes work as intended.
The odd box out, upon postback, does not contain the updated value that the user typed into the box.
When debugging the application, it is clear that myTextBox.Text reflects the old, pre-populated value, not the new, user-supplied value.
Every other box properly shows their respective user-supplied values.
I did find a workaround.
My solution was to basically extract the text box's value out of the Request.Form object: Request.Form[myTextBox.UniqueID], which does contain the user-supplied value.
What could be going on, here?
As I mentioned, the other text boxes receive the user-supplied values just fine, and this particular problematic text box doesn't have any logic associated to it -- it just takes the value and saves it.
The main difference between this text box and the others is that this is a multi-line box (for inputting notes), which I believe is rendered as an HTML "textarea" tag instead of an "input" tag in ASP.NET.
Are you initially loading the data only when !Page.IsPostBack? Also, is view state enabled for the text box?
this happens to me all the time.
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
// populate text boxes from database
}
}
I would second Jonathan's response I would check your databinding settings.
If you do not need ViewState for the textboxes (i.e. no postback occurs until form submit) then you should disable it.
It sounds like you are not having problems saving the data (since you said you have managed to get the control to read the correct data back). Therefore, I would say the problem loads in your databinding code.
Remember the order of the page lifecycle, and where you are databinding your form.
PreInit
Init
Load
Your Control Event Handler
If you are reading the value in the Control Event handler, yet databinding in Init or Load, you'll have the old value.
The trick is to always databind in the correct event, or check for postback and don't databind then.
Are you initially loading the data only when !Page.IsPostBack? Also, is view state enabled for the text box?
I had almost forgotten to check the ViewState, but ended up remembering to verify that it wasn't disabled before making my post here on SO. I even set EnableViewState="true" to make sure.
I did find the solution, and it coincided with most of the answers here. The form was indeed loading its data more than once (which is intentional behavior). I implemented some special code for this field, and all is well.
Thanks for your replies, all!