Question

I have an html button and I’d like to have a server side click event but it’s not firing when the button is clicked and the page does a postback. The button is inside the ItemTemplate for an <asp:ListView id="usersListView"/> that renders a table of information.

aspx

<button runat="server" id="delete" class="btn btn-mini" title="Delete" OnServerClick="delete_Onclick"></button>

aspx.cs

protected void delete_Onclick(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    ListViewItem listViewItem = (ListViewItem)((Button)sender).NamingContainer;
    if(listViewItem != null) {
        Membership.DeleteUser(((Label) listViewItem.FindControl("userName")).Text);
    }
}

Answer 1

My guess is that it will not work like this because events raised by nested controls placed in item templates should rather be handled by ListView’s ItemCommand event.

For this to work then, you should set button’s CommandName and CommandArgument and handle specific values in the listview’s ItemCommand.

However, if I remember correcly, the HtmlInputButton does not have CommandName and CommandArgument properties. Instead, use asp:Button

 <asp:Button id="delete" runat="server" CommandName="something" CommandArgument="somethingelse" />

and handle the listview’s itemcommand:

 protected void usersListView_ItemCommand( object sender, ListViewCommandEventArgs e )
 {
     switch ( e.CommandName ) { 
         case "something" : 
             // this is where you handle the button click
     }
 }

Note that CommandArgument is usually bound to an item-specific value (id perhaps) so that inside the server-side handler you can precisely identify the exact clicked button:

 <asp:Button id="delete" runat="server" CommandName="something" CommandArgument="<%# Eval( "id" ) %>" />

 protected void usersListView_ItemCommand( object sender, ListViewCommandEventArgs e )
 {
     switch ( e.CommandName ) { 
         case "something" : 
             // this is where you handle the button click
             var itemid = e.CommandArgument; 
     }
 }