Using colons with FindControl().

Monday, December 13, 2004

ASP.NET

This is a nice undocumented feature. You can use colons inside specify string to find control within another control:

Control oControl = FindControl("MyGrid:_Ctl3:MyButton") ;

This line will return MyButton in row 0 (which get the random ID of _Ctl3).

(And you get ASP.NET methods to get row ID. E.g. UniqueID).

Actually ASP.NET uses this technique while dealing with PostBack.

5 Comments

Neat, didn't know you could do that.

Could easily (and obviously) lead to some pretty crappy code...hard-coding control generated ids is a bug waiting to happen. Better off using the Items collection:

Control oControl = MyGrid.Items[3].FindControl("MyButton");

Karl

karl - Monday, December 13, 2004 4:14:00 PM
I just wish FindControl had a recursive version. I have had to code that into each and every project

protected Control FindControlRecursive( Control root, string id )

{

if ( root.ID == id )

{

return root;

}

foreach ( Control c in root.Controls )

{

Control t = FindControlRecursive( c, id );

if ( t != null )

{

return t;

}

}

return null;

}

Oddur Mangusson - Monday, December 13, 2004 4:59:00 PM
Oddur:

For user controls, why not expose the control you are searching for as a property?

karl - Monday, December 13, 2004 6:49:00 PM
They are dynamcly added to the controls collection, so I can't :(

Oddur Magnusson - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 3:13:00 PM
Oddur,

you can, use UniqueID to get the dynamic conytol ID and use it.

Natty Gur - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 4:21:00 PM

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