Question

I’m creating user controls that i will put into an update panel and make them visible only when required using triggers. Once visible it will float in a dialog box so it has a close button which will just hide the control on client side.

The controls have multiple post back states, like a wizard, i’m using a multi view control to accomplish that. My problem is that once the user is at step number two in the control, if the user closes the dialog, than opens the dialog again, (note that the control is made visible on the server and reloaded by updating the updatepanel) the second step will still be displayed. The reason is . because whenever there is a postback the control will load its state using the viewstate, even if EnableViewState is false it will still load it using the LoadControlState method. so my quesion is how can i force a user control to load fresh with its default values without any postback data.

Answer 1

Its is possible.

I found a secret method in the control class, called ClearChildState(), this is a protected method and will clear the viewstate and the controlstate for all childcontrols.

So in my example, i created a class that inherits from panel

namespace MyControls
{
  public class Panel:System.Web.UI.WebControls.Panel
    {
        public void Reset()
        {
            ClearChildState();
        }
    }
}

In my page initialize event i check for request[flag] to reset the control

public partial class Test : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnInit(e);
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request["Reset"]) && Request["Reset"] == "1")
        {
            pnlCreateAccountDialog.Reset();               
        }
    }
}

OnClient side i have a Reset() function that i can call whenever i want the next postback to load a clean control

  <script type="text/javascript">
        function AddReset() {
            $('#Reset').val('1');
        }
        function RemoveReset() {
            $('#Reset').val('');
        }
    </script>