FindControl question and a MasterPage question about controls

Rushino · September 10th, 2010, 10:13 AM

Hello,

Ive got two questions i am trying to figure out the real answer.

1- This one is related to the FindControl fonction. In one of my project i use a masterpage with a page.. the container id name is "content".

It is okay to reach the control directly this way : this.FindControl("ctl00$contenue$txtMotif") ? because it seem to work rather well (i don't need to pass through containers..) if you are able to predict the resulting ID.. i guess we could also use Control.ClientID ?

2- My second question is regarding the masterpage and controls events.. i was wondering why is the page controls events are handled before the masterpage control events ? Should it be more normal to handle controls in masterpage first since its the first generated part of the page ? or i am all wrong ?

Thanks.

Imar · September 11th, 2010, 02:47 AM

Hi Rushino,

1) If it works, it works. But with string literals you do indeed run the risk of naming problems. If the ClientID works, you should use that instead. The only problem is: how do you get the ClientID? If you have it, you already have a reference to the control so there's no need for FindControl.... ;-)

2) A master page is not created first. Confusing as it may sound, a Master Page actually turns up as a child control of the page. More details can be found here, in particular Figure 7: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163967.aspx

Cheers,

Imar

Rushino · September 11th, 2010, 11:35 AM

Hi Imar,

Thanks for your answer. I will try to elaborate a little more about what i am doing.

I am making a system that actually save every controls which has ID with "txt" in it.. (mean be to textbox) it save the infos in a BD.. so whatever someone add a new control to the page.. it should save the new controls auto to the DB.

What i am saving also.. are the control ID.. to do so.. i go through the POST request and find every control that contains a "txt" word in the ID then im saving the whole control id which is ctl00$contenue$txtMotif as an example for a control. Then when i load back the info.. i use this id with the find control.. every control will get a different name anyway cause most of the control have question number in the ID.

You said "how do you get the ClientID? If you have it, you already have a reference to the control so there's no need for FindControl.... " what did you mean ? in order to get that control i need to pass that reference to the findcontrol.. and cast it to an actual control type.. otherwise i cant access his properties.

Imar · September 11th, 2010, 03:17 PM

Quote:

in order to get that control i need to pass that reference to the findcontrol.. and cast it to an actual control type.. otherwise i cant access his properties.

Exactly. And thus you can't access its ClientID property. You can use the value that is eventualy exposed by the ClientID property of the control if you know it upfront (that's how you use FindControl) but you can't access the Control's ClientID property until you have a reference to that control.

Imar