Question

I would like to know if it is possible to assign “metadata” to an asp.net control that could be retrieved later in a post back? For instance, imagine that I have a LinkButton:

LinkButton link = new LinkButton();
link.ID = "LinkButton_0";
link.Text = "Click here for more info";
link.Click += new EventHandler(link_Click);

Now I want to assign more data to the control so that when the post back event occurs I can retrieve this data to find out what to do. I thought about using the “Attributes” property but I guess it is not a good solution because it may affect the control’s html layout:

link.Attributes.Add("param0", "value0");
link.Attributes.Add("param1", "value1");
link.Attributes.Add("param2", "value2");

I need to do this because my page has plenty of link buttons that are created dynamically and all of them raise the same post back event.

Some people suggested I simply concatenate all “metadata” in the control’s ID, but I’m trying to find a better solution.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Since you don’t want these metadata in markup I presume that you don’t need it on client side, so you can put your meta data in Session, and name session item like control ID + paramID, something like this :

this.Session.Add(link.ID + "-param1", "Value0");

btw. this is a example if you do that from Page methods, if you don’t have page instance you can access session like that :

HttpContext.Current.Session.Add(link.ID + "-param1", "Value0");