Question

I have an ASP.NET C# website and I am attempting to retrieve the inner html from a HTML in my page when a button is clicked.

My Problem: I use the function FindControl() but it returns null when it should find the element. Why is this happening, what am I doing wrong?

My HTML page:

<%@ Page Title="test" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Site.master" AutoEventWireup="true"
    CodeBehind="test.aspx.cs" Inherits="test" %>

<asp:Content ID="BodyContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="ActualContent">
    <div class="regMainContainer mainContainer container">
            <!-- Attempting to get the below div -->
            <!-- Knowtice it does not have runat="server", 
                 I would prefer not to do that if I dont need to -->
            <div id="courseDiv" class="courseContainer">
            </div>
    </div>
</asp:content>

My Code that executes when a button is clicked(inside test.aspx.cs file:

HtmlGenericControl d = (HtmlGenericControl)FindControl("courseDiv");

Answer 1

FindControl can only find controls that has runat=”server” attributes. The good news is that you can easily change you div to a panel, and add data that way.

the bad news is that this still won’t let you access the innerhtml of the div, .net sees it as just a container for other controls.

The best way to do this would be some form of ajax, since your client side script would be able to read that contents and pass it to a server side method