Question

So I’ve got an ASP.NET control with a server form with a bunch of runat="server" with events defined in the markup. However none of the events are fireing when I click the buttons. The postback occurs and in the Page_Load event IsPostback is true.

What should I be checking to see why the events don’t fire? What are the most likely reasons as to why they’re not being bound?

UPDATE: I’ve abandoned this code. When I got to the point of having checked everything mentioned here, still haing postbacks occur but no events firing, I’ve rolled back to a previous stable state and I’m starting again

Answer 1

This is an interesting way of skinning the cat. You are not asking “What did I do wrong”, but “what are the likely things that I could have done wrong”.

Interesting, because I think it shows that you want to figure it our on your own, but also because I am having a hard time coming up with suggestions, without any kind of a hint. There is an almost unlimited number of possibilities.

If the form posts back, the event fires. I think this is synonmous. If you don’t see an event handler being invoked, maybe you are looking at the wrong place.

I find this method useful in such situations. I call it from page_load, and it shows me details about what caused the event to fire, before event handlers are invoked.

    /// <summary>
    /// Find which control caused the post back
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="page"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    public static System.Web.UI.Control 
                 GetPostBackControl(System.Web.UI.Page page) {
        Control control = null;
        string ctrlname = page.Request.Params["__EVENTTARGET"];
        if (ctrlname != null && ctrlname != String.Empty) {
            control = page.FindControl(ctrlname);
        }
        // if __EVENTTARGET is null, the control is a button type and we need to 
        // iterate over the form collection to find it
        else {
            string ctrlStr = String.Empty;
            Control c = null;
            foreach (string ctl in page.Request.Form) {
                // handle ImageButton controls ...
                if (ctl.EndsWith(".x") || ctl.EndsWith(".y")) {
                    ctrlStr = ctl.Substring(0, ctl.Length - 2);
                    c = page.FindControl(ctrlStr);
                }
                else {
                    c = page.FindControl(ctl);
                }
                if (c is System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button ||
                         c is System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton) {
                    control = c;
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return control;
    }