Question

If I have a standard HTML textbox: I can retrieve the value using Request.Form.

But how do I go about populating this textbox from the server-side? I tried

Request.Form["txtTest"] = "blah"; 

but got a readonly error.

Answer 1

If you want to have first class support for accessing the control by its id on the server side (as per .net controls) you would need to make it so it has a runat=”server” tag.

Otherwise you can set the value dynamicaly by having a property in your code behind and pulling in the value from this on the aspx page using databinding e.g.

<input type=text value="<%=PropertyInCodeBehindClass %>" />

and

public string PropertyInCodeBehindClass
{
  get;
  set;
}