Transforming plain ID to adorned ID

I must be missing something obvious here. Suppose I create an ASP.NET Web User Control, and I use a ModalPopupExtender inside it. In the ascx, I set various properties of the extender to refer to controls within the Web User Control, such as PopupDragHandleControlID="TitleText". At runtime, the control with ID "TitleText" gets a more complicated ID on the rendered page (call it an 'adorned' ID, not sure what the offical term is), such as "ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_MyCtrl1_TitleText". The behaviour javascript for the extender does things like -

this._dragHandleElement = $get(this._PopupDragHandleControlID);

That wouldn't work with the 'plain' ID, in fact by adding various alert() boxes I can see that _PopupDragHandleControlID has been transformed - somewhere - to the 'adorned' version. I've written an extender that declares and uses ID properties in just the same way, but they don't get transformed from the 'plain' version at runtime. So, I either have to use ugly workarounds like setting that ID programmatically from server-side code (e.g. MyExtender1.BlahID = MyBlahCtrl.ClientID), or ... figure out how to get that transformation to happen automatically like it seems to for ModalPopupExtender. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

(Note, I'm not talking about the TargetControlID property, so ResolveTargetControlID wouldn't come into it, and I'm talking about an extender that's right next to the controls in question.)

Thanks in advance for any leads.

Kevin.

All extender properties that reference ID's are decorated with theIDReferencePropertyAttribute. It helps converts server side ids into client versions so that the behavior can resolve them easily. If you look at the ModalPopupExtender.cs file, the PopupDragHandleControlID has that attribute and so so any other properties that are used to get control IDs.

Do you have any references that confirm that's so and detail where it occurs? The reasons I ask are 1. My extender's properties that ref IDs already have that attribute, and no such conversion occurs, and 2. The documentation for that attribute doesn't mention anything like that, merely that it can be used by designers to help out by giving a list of control IDs at design time - no mention of anything happening at runtime. But if that attribute is the answer and if you have more information on it, please do say so I can figure out why it isn't working for me.

Or does anyone else have details on how the conversion occurs for PopupDragHandleControlID et al?

Thanks in advance for any help

Kevin.

It happens in ExtenderBaseDesignerHelpers.cs file. It is part of the Toolkit framework. If you are building on top of ExtenderControlBase this is taken care of automatically.

Should have included these links earlier

http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/Walkthrough/CreatingNewExtender.aspx

http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/Walkthrough/ExtenderClasses.aspx

Aha. In fact, I had a hand-rolled extender built with ref to various online docs rather than one done as per that walkthrough, which when followed showed up I'd not got the ECB derivation stuff right. In the interim, I'd done some tracing through the ACT code and you're quite right, that attribute is used as a signal for the base classes to apply some transformation before serialising. Funny the docs don't mention that. Anyway, thanks for the pointers - it's running ok now.

Kevin.

Treating an ASCX control as independent

One huge disadvantage of the UpdatePanel control, IMHO, is that all of the Page life cycle reloads again.

I was wondering, when I just want to load a single control that has nothing to do with the rest of the stuff on the page, is this roundtrip really necessary?

I know that there's the client approach which says I can communicate with the server with minimal data and create all controls at the client-side, but that won't let me use server-controls and their benefits.

I thought of something that renders an ASCX control and serves its HTML, but it not covers everything, such as event firing.

Is my idea doable? Anyone bumped into this before?

Thanks!

If you want the benefits of the server controls you must also allow their life cycle to run. It's both the advantage and the disadvantage of the UpdatePanel.

Agreed... This is discussed here:http://encosia.com/index.php/2007/07/11/why-aspnet-ajax-updatepanels-are-dangerous

One option is to use ASP.NET PageMethods (also described in that link) which simplifies WebMethod calls and only returns results and not much overhead. You can also use multiple UpdatePanels so that you aren't refreshing so much.

Hope this helps,

-Damien

Triggers for update panel

I have a web page (aspx) that has on it 2 controls (ascx) - one of the controls has an update panel with functionality for it etc. - I want to trigger the update function from the second control that has a linkbutton on it.

Is this possible?

TIA

Yes. Update panel has Triggers element which can be used as follows

 <asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" runat="server"> <Triggers> <asp:AsyncPostBackTrigger ControlID="lnkButton" EventName="Click"/> </Triggers> </asp:UpdatePanel>

It would seem so - but if the trigger and the update panel are in different ascx files they can not see each other - even if those ascx files exist as controls on the same aspx page

You can explicitly call Update method of another UpdatePanel like this:

UpdatePanel1.Update() ;

Assumption: LinkButton is in UpdatePanel2 and the above code is written in event handler for LinkButton click event.

Generally, you have this kind of scenario in Master-Detail relationship. There is tutorial onhttp://ajax.asp.net site about this.

Okay I dont think you are looking at what the question says - because this doesnt work - unless you can point me to the specific tutorial I cant find the one you are talking about

here is a simple picture that diagrams what I am trying to do

Page1.aspx has two controls on it - both controls are ascx files (Control1.ascx and Control2.ascx)

Control1.ascx has an image button that when clicked is to trigger the UpdatePanel on Control2.ascx