exposing server control from masterpage as public property

robbaralla · February 16th, 2010, 12:55 PM

Hello there,

I have the scenerio where the content page is influenced from dropdownlists on the masterpage.
One of the ddl's becomes its data through code behind, like so

Code:

ddlType.DataSource = accTypeInTown;
            ddlType.Items.Add("select type");
            ddlType.DataTextField = "Name";
            ddlType.DataValueField = "Id";
            ddlType.DataBind();

this databinding takes places in the SelectedIndexChanged of another ddl, to filter its values.

To access these ddls on a content page, I created public properties for them in the masterpage.cs, like so

Code:

    public DropDownList MPddlTown
    {
        get
        {
            return ddlTown;
        }
        set
        {
            ddlTown = value;
        }
    }
    public DropDownList MPddlType
    {
        get
        {
            return ddlType;
        }
        set
        {
            ddlType = value;
        }

However if I now try to load the page in the browser, I get the following error: Input string was not in a correct format.

pointing to the code-line ddlType.DataBind();

How can this be, before declaring the public ddl properties it worked fine...?

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance, Robin