Question

I found a workaround for my specific need, but I thought I’d ask this question anyway.

Say I have a typical data entry web project with a master page — instead of using the Session variable and using Response.Redirect or Server.Transfer to redirect users who are part of the way through data entry to the next step, I’d rather use cross-page posting.

I tried setting up one of my websites in this manner, with a button like:

<asp:Button ID="next" text="next" runat="server" PostBackUrl="EnterInfo.aspx" />

When I went to test the changes, my <form> tag hadn’t changed at all:

<form id="aspnetForm" action="SelectUser.aspx" method="post" name="aspnetForm">

Did I miss any details here, or is cross-page posting simply not intended for use with a master page?

Edit:
The form tag above is the tag as rendered on the client — not the server-side tag. I’ve read MSDN articles (like this one) that seem to me to explicitly state that cross page posting actually posts the form to another page.

Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted this as changing the form’s action, but regardless my source form does not post invoke anything anywhere on my target when I click the button I altered — it merely posts back to the current page.

Answer 1

I don’t think using the PostBackUrl attribute will change the action of the form in the markup, as there could be many other controls just doing a normal postback. I imagine that some javascript is used to change the action of the form when this particular button is pressed.