Can anyone explain why a dropdownlist is only able to manage its viewstate if the items are hardcoded? I set the dropdownlist's onSelectedIndexChanged event to a simple handler that sets a label to the selected value. Of course it is only bound if it's not a postback. There is nothing else on the page.

After an item is selected, the page reloads and the ddl is empty. If I then hit the back button, it shows my page with the item I selected in the ddl visible, but the label is not set, showing the handler was never called.

Can anyone think of any reason in the world why the handler would not be called?

How are you handling IsPostBack?

It sounds like you are adding the items only the first time the page loads. If not, try creating them everytime and see if that helps.

If thats not the case, some code would be useful to diagnose the problem.

J

kent -

The dropdownlist control *should* maintain the list of items regardless of how they are added (markup/hardcoded or runtime). If you are indeed binding the DDL only on a non-postback page_load then you should see expected behavior for the list and the onSelectedIndexChanged handler should be called when you change selection. Post your code for this part of it so we can see for sure that there isn't something vital missing.

With regards to the back button: when you hit the back button you are going back to the previous state of the page. That state was the first load of the page which populated the list. In this case you should certainly not see the selectedindexchanged event fire because you are going back in the history of the page. (Plus, in most cases the page isn't even being run again on the server because of the browser's cached version of the page.)

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.

Ok, I figured out the problem and I am posting my solution just in case anyone else ever comes across this issue. Make sure the ASP Postback SERVICE is running. It's funny but I am not laughing.

There is an ASP postback service? Can you elaborate? I have never heard of such a thing.