Question

There are ASP controls such as radiobuttonlist and checkboxlist and you can databind them to a database query. It’s great for creating dynamic lists with user interaction. What I’m trying to do is generate a list of textboxes in the same fashion. A list of textboxes that behave the same way.

The object is to have a checkboxlist that is generated via datasource/database. When the user is finished selecting items from this list, they click a button. That list hides (using jquery) and a new list is created based on their selections. However, the new list is now a list of their selections accompanied by an empty textbox. The user fills in the textboxes for each entry and submits again which commits it to a database.

SO:

checkbox - description
checkbox - description
checkbox - description
checkbox - description

Becomes:

Description - Textbox
Description - Textbox

The reason that I’m looking for a list-type control is so that I can ultimately loop through it for submission to the database using linq. Does that make sense? My real question is if there is a control like this yet. I gave the full description in case someone has any other ideas, short of creating a custom control.

Answer 1

There’s nothing out of the box that does what you describe no. But you can still loop through controls. I would put your form controls inside of an asp:Panel or a div with runat=”server” and use something like the following code to cycle through them as you described.

foreach(Control ctl in myPanel.Controls)
{
  //check control type and handle
  if (ctl is TextBox)
  {
     //handle the control and its value here
  }
}