Subscribe to event in another control on a page

pauliehaha · July 22nd, 2008, 02:37 AM

Hi,

I have a forum page called Chat.aspx which consist of the following controls:

Message
MessageSubmit
PostList

PostList is a repeater containing Message & MessageSubmit controls.

I include single instances of Message & MessageSubmit controls in Chat.aspx to display the first post (it's a Q&A type forum).

Subsequent messages are displayed in the PostList control.

The problem I have is that when I submit a reply to the first post (in Chat.aspx) an event is fired in MessageSubmit which is handled in Chat.aspx and binds the data to the Message control but the event it is supposed to fire and which Postlist should handle is always null so it doesn't fire and Postlist does not not refresh to display the new post.

It looks a bit like this:

Code:

public event NewPostCreatedHandler NewPostCreated;

protected void FirstPostReply_NewPostCreated(object sender, int postid)
{
  BindPost();
  if (NewPostCreated != null)
  {
    NewPostCreated(sender, postid);
  }
}

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

planoie · July 22nd, 2008, 06:46 AM

Simple answer: you can't do this.

What you are asking for is "push" technology. This died years ago (did it ever live?). Pages are never alive together in the way you want them to be. You need to use server polling to check for updates to the chat. You could do this with an AJAX timer.

-Peter
compiledthoughts.com

pauliehaha · July 23rd, 2008, 07:43 AM

Are you sure? Maybe I haven't explained it very clearly.

The submit event in MessageSubmit triggers the NewPostCreated event handled by FirstPostReply_NewPostCreated in Chat.aspx. After processing the MessageSubmit events shouldn't the page process PostList events (if there are any) as it's the next control on the page.

I just want to raise an event in FirstPostReply_NewPostCreated to be handled in PostList which page processing should be getting around to next.

http://www.thewebsiteshop.co.uk

planoie · July 23rd, 2008, 11:48 AM

My bad... I misread the subject. I thought you were trying to gets one page to trip and event handler on another page. I hereby retrack my previous post.

Yes, you certainly can have one control trigger an event on another, it's just a matter of wiring up the events. Something like this would be needed in an early point of your page (page_load should be fine):

Code:

myControlToWatch.MyEvent += new NewPostCreatedHandler(myControlToListen.PublicEventHandler);

Good decoupling practices would dictate that you keep the specific event signature away from the listening control:

Code:

myControlToWatch.MyEvent += new NewPostCreatedHandler(myLocalHandlerMethod);

protected void myLocalHandlerMethod(object sender, int postid){
   myControlInstanceToInformOfChange.HeySomethingHappened(parameters...);
}

-Peter
compiledthoughts.com

pauliehaha · July 24th, 2008, 03:48 AM

Hi Peter,

You didn't misread the subject, I changed it when I realised that it was misleading. I just hadn't explained it very well.

I'll give your solution a go and let you know how I get on.

Best Wishes,

Paul