Question

I know this has got to be the simplest-sounding question ever asked about ASP.Net but I’m baffled. I have a form wherein my visitor will enter name, address, etc. Then I am POSTing that form via the PostBackUrl property of my Submit button to another page, where the fields are supposed to be all re-formed into new hidden fields, then POSTed again to Paypal.

My problem is I cannot get at the values entered by the visitor in the original page. Any time I put in “runat=’server'”, ASP.Net completely changes the ID of the control, making it impossible to figure out how to access. In the POSTed form I tried Request.Form["_txtFirstName"] and that turned up null. Then I tried ((TextBox)PreviousPage.FindControl("_txtFirstName")).Text and that was null, too. I’ve tried variations on those. I cannot figure out how I’m supposed to get at these controls. Why does this stuff need to be so difficult?

Answer 1

Are you using MasterPages? If so, you have to search for the control inside the content placeholder:

ContentPlaceHolder placeholder = (ContentPlaceHolder)Page.PreviousPage.Master.FindControl("ContentPlaceHolder1");

TextBox previousPageTextBox = (TextBox)placeholder.FindControl("TextBox1");