Hi, everyone. I hope someone can help me with this.

I wanted to access the textbox control "TB_firstName", but the Page is not letting me because "TB_firstName" is embeded in the "DetailsView1".
I tried doing (TextBox)DetailsView1.findControl("TB_firstName") but that does let me access it either.

The reason i am using <asp:TemplateField> instead of <asp:BoundField> because i wanted to use the <asp:RequiredFieldValidator>

Any suggestion would be appriciated.


<asp:DetailsView ID="DetailsView1" Runat="server"
     DataSourceID="ObjectDataSource2" DataKeyNames="ContactID">
  <Fields>
  <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="First Name:" >
    <ItemTemplate>
        <%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "FirstName")%>
    </ItemTemplate>
    <EditItemTemplate>
       <asp:TextBox ID="TB_firstName" Runat="server" MaxLength=15
          Text='<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "FirstName")%>'/>
       <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RFV_firstName" Runat="server"
          ControlToValidate="TB_firstName" Text="*"
          ErrorMessage="First name is required."/>
    </EditItemTemplate>
</asp:detailView>

Hey Buddy ...
First of all... If u are using .Net 2.0, u may to shorten ur code by directly using the Eval method as shown below ..

<asp:DetailsView ID="DetailsView1" Runat="server"
     DataSourceID="ObjectDataSource2" DataKeyNames="ContactID">
  <Fields>
  <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="First Name:" >
    <ItemTemplate>
        <%#Eval("FirstName")%>
    </ItemTemplate>
    <EditItemTemplate>
       <asp:TextBox ID="TB_firstName" Runat="server" MaxLength=15
          Text='<%#Eval("FirstName")%>'/>
       <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RFV_firstName" Runat="server"
          ControlToValidate="TB_firstName" Text="*"
          ErrorMessage="First name is required."/>
    </EditItemTemplate>
</asp:detailView>

Now to trap the TextBox from the Code Behind ..
If you want the TextBox from a particular row ... Just enter the row index ... Else u may want to use a foreach loop or a for-next loop ..
The code below tells u how to trap the value of the TextBox from each row of the detailview ...

// To get the Value of a field bound to a Grid View or DetailView ...
// Run a foreach loop or a for (int i = 0; i<=DetailsView1.Rows.Count; // i++)

        foreach (DetailsViewRow dtl_vwRow in DetailsView1.Rows)
        {
            string strFirstName = ((TextBox)dtl_vwRow.FindControl("TB_firstName")).T ext;
        }


This should work ... Enjoy !!! :)

wow, excellent post. Exactly what I was looking for AbhijitSinha. One question, how would you do it if it were boundfield? Becuase for some reason it doesn't seem to work when I just go DetailsView1.Rows[0].Cell[1].toString()