Question

So I have a listbox on my page and some textfields. Through the textfields I can add an item to my listbox (click the button, it adds it to a private List which is then set as a ViewState and the list is databound again). My listbox is also in an updatepanel which gets triggered on the button’s Click event. Problem: My Viewstate remains null on a postback so it gets reset each time.

Some code:

private const string VIEW_INGREDIENTS = "IngredientsList";
        private const string VIEW_LANGUAGE = "CurrentLanguage";
        private List<IngredientData> _ingredientsList;

protected void Page_PreInit(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (Page.IsPostBack)
            {
                if (ViewState[VIEW_INGREDIENTS] != null)
                {
                    _ingredientsList = (List<IngredientData>) ViewState[VIEW_INGREDIENTS];
                }

            }
            else
            {
                // prepare ingredient lists
                _ingredientsList = new List<IngredientData>();
            }
        }

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {

            lstIngredients.DataSource = _ingredientsList;
            lstIngredients.DataTextField = "Text";
            lstIngredients.DataValueField = "Name";
            lstIngredients.DataBind();
        }

protected void btnAddIngredient_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            _ingredientsList.Add(new IngredientData { Name = txtIngredientName.Text, Quantity = txtUnitQuantity.Text, Unit = lstUnits.SelectedValue });

            ViewState[VIEW_INGREDIENTS] = _ingredientsList;
            lstIngredients.DataSource = _ingredientsList;
            lstIngredients.DataBind();
        }

Answer 1

You’re using vewstate during PreInit ? Try to check that a bit later during PreLoad.