Question

I am trying to change a label’s text by using server-side JavaScript (onclick) and C# within the page_load event. For example, I would like to write something like the following:

Label1.Attributes.Add("onclick", "Label2.text='new caption'")

Does anyone know the correct code for this? Also, what is this type of code referred to; is it just JavaScript or JavaScript in C# or is there a specific name? Lastly, does a book or online resource exist that lists the choices of control.attributes.add(“event”, “syntax”) code to use with C#?

Answer 1

There is no server-side Javascript (unless you change to a platform other than ASP.NET where you actually use Javascript as server language). What you are doing is adding an attribute to the html tag, and the code will be executed entirely on the client side.

First, let’s look at how it’s done in HTML without the server side code and server side controls:

<span onclick="document.getElementById('Label2').innerHTML='Thank you';">Click me</span>
<span id="Label2"></span>

To use Label controls instead, setting the onclick attribute from server side code, you would do like this:

Label1.Attributes.Add("onclick", "document.getElementById('Label2').innerHTML='Thank you';");

This will work as long as the controls are not inside a naming container. If they are, the id of the controls are prepended with the name of the container to keep them unique, so you need to use the ClientID property to find out what their final id is:

Label1.Attributes.Add("onclick", "document.getElementById('" + Label2.ClientID + "').innerHTML='Thank you';");

The ClientID always contains the id that you can use to access the element from Javascript, so the last code always works regardless if the control is in a naming container or not.

To find out what attributes you can use, you should look at the HTML documentation, for example the Internet Explorer documentation for the span element. When looking at the documetation for a specific feature, notice the Standards Information, as that will tell you if it works in any browser or just in Internet Explorer.