After pouring over about a dozen sites that clearly dealt with ClientID
all by itself, I came to the realization that about 2/3+ of them were
doing it wrong. It is indeed impossible to grab the Client ID of a form
field from within a DataGrid like this: <%= FormFieldID.ClientID %>. At
least, not without extra work.
How did I do this? I created a new DataGrid from scratch, with a form
above it and a form inside of it. This was a page about 50 lines long -
so, very short - with no user dependencies except for the initial
loading of the DG with content from the DB.
While I was able to get the ClientID of the form that was outside of the
DG, I was unable to do so for any form fields inside of the DG using <%=
FormFieldID.ClientID %>. Doing so threw the error.
That got me to thinking. Which, after nearly two days of rest from the
subject, was a wee bit clearer than before Sunday.
I decided to call the form field directly. I first Dim'd a name as a
textbox, and then I called the right textbox by catching it when the DG
was being created. Since it was in the footer (the footer is an "add"
row) simply calling like this:
Dim add_Date as TextBox = e.Item.Cells(1).FindControl("add_Date")
was a bit difficult. Which row would be referenced? How would the script
know to look in the footer? Since the footer comes and goes (I don't
need it during an edit), looking for it would have to be conditional.
In order to catch the right row (the footer) while the DG is being
built, I added a feature to the DataGrid itself (onItemDataBound =
"dg_ItemDataBound") which calls the sub dg_ItemDataBound when the
DataGrid is being built.
From here, I created a Sub (Sub dg_itemDataBound()) in which I
contained my attempt to find the ClientID of the form field within the
footer:
If e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.Footer And dg.ShowFooter = True then
Dim add_Date as TextBox = e.Item.Cells(1).FindControl("add_Date")
End If
From here it was pretty easy to set up a RegisterStartupScript (inside
the IF) that made use of add_Date.ClientID. Since I had already defined
add_Date as the form field called "add_Date" in the second cell of the
footer row, the usage of add_Date.ClientID no longer threw an error.
I also had to implement this within the dg_Edit() Sub, in a slightly
different fashion, but that's because I allow rows to be edited.
***
What is really strange is the sheer number of sites that claim that
using <%= FormFieldID.ClientID %> will actually work inside of a
DataGrid without further modification or code. It certainly didn't work
for me.
I would also like to apologize to the community at large for my hissy
fit on the weekend. It had been a very long week, this was just one of
many problems I was still trying to solve, and Juan's reply seemed to be
mocking me for my lack of progress. Normally I'm much more mild
mannered, but something in me must have snapped from all the stress.
That should not have happened.
Gomen dasai.
TIA
....Geshel
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