Question

I have an ASP.NET form with a few controls and a submit button at the bottom, all inside an update panel:

<asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" ID="upContent">
    <ContentTemplate>
        <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="tbxMyTextBox" AutoPostBack="true" />
        <asp:Button ID="btnSubmit" runat="server" Text="Submit" OnClientClick="return doStuff()" OnClick="btnSubmit_Click" />
    </ContentTemplate>
</asp:UpdatePanel>

If I write something in the TextBox and click ‘submit’ immediately (without clicking out of the TextBox first), the changes are not recorded (as seen in the server-side event handler). However, if I write something in the TextBox, and then change focus to another control, an AutoPostback happens through the UpdatePanel and then clicking ‘submit’ does recognize these changes. How can I force this content to update right as I click the submit button, while still running both the clientside and serverside events attached to it? Thanks!

Answer 1

Is is possible that your text-box gets cleared due to some on-submit/on-click event handler? I will suggest you do use some tool such as Fiddler to inspect the POST data in request. Or you can put a break-point at your server side code and inspect the request data. Look for particularly Request.Form[tbxMyTextBox.UniqueID] – i.e. look for presence of value for your text-box’s name (name property at client side which corresponds to UniqueID property at server side). If the request contains the value typed in the text-box then something is happening on server side but good news is you can always retrieve the value from Request object. If the value is not present in the Request object then it means that client side code is clearing the value before the submit.