I have a HTML textarea that when characters are typed in, client-side javascript determines the word count and displays on the web-page. When I try to write the inputted data from the textarea into my sql database using VB, I'm getting an error "Object not set to an instance of an object". I think this is because my textarea does not contain the runat="server" tag. If I add this, then my client-side word count doesn't work anymore. Is there a way I can pull data from the HTML textarea using vb on page submit and keep the client-side javascript working?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

You’re going to have to provide more info.
For instance, what is the line of code that raises “Object not set to an instance of an object”?

this is the javascript code:

  <script language="javascript">
        var count = "2000";
        function limiter(){
            var tex = document.Form1.comment.value;
            var len = tex.length;
            if(len > count){
                tex = tex.substring(0,count);
                document.Form1.comment.value =tex;
                return false;
            }
            document.Form1.limit.value = count-len;
        }
        </script>

this is the layout of the html code:

<textarea id="taproblem" name="comment" wrap="hard" rows="6" cols="100" onkeyup="limiter()" class="label2"></textarea><br>
<script language="javascript"> document.write("<input type=text name=limit size=4 readonly value="+count+">");
</script>

The VB code is that raises the error happens on the page submit event and is as follows:

  Private Sub btnSubmit_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnSubmit.Click
      Dim iCD = taproblem.Value

Do you need more information?

Thank You for your assistance!

It is not a good idea to not specify variable types. Your should be something like I suspect that the reference taproblem.Value does not refer to what you think it refers to, and needs to have some further resolution, or you need to use the name instead of the ID, or you need to add .ToString(), or something like that.

Incidentally, if you start a listing with "[ c o d e ]" (but without the spaces or quotes), and end it with "[ / c o d e ]" (without the spaces or quotes) the font will be fixed instead of proportional, and what you see is what you will get once you post it (more or less). That's what I did here (additionally adding color...).

You are correct...I added the runat="server" tag back into the textarea, used the ID instead of the name and adjusted my javascript accordingly. The client-side script is working fine and I am now able to extract the data within the textarea for data storage.

Thank you very much.