When designing my page, I encountered an issue with automatically generated IDs within the repeater item template. Let me explain:
<asp:Repeater ID="rptThreads" runat="server"
onitemcreated="rptThreads_ItemCreated">
<HeaderTemplate>
<table cellpadding="0px" cellspacing="0">
</HeaderTemplate>
<ItemTemplate>
<tr style="height:50px">
<td>
<asp:PlaceHolder ID="plcItemTitle" runat="server">
<asp:Panel id="titleContainer" runat="server" style="position:absolute;">
<asp:HyperLink ID="lnkTitle" runat="server" style="float:left;padding-right:10px;" Text='<%# Container.DataItem%>' />
<asp:Panel id="pnlEditButtons" runat="server" Visible="false" style="vertical-align:middle;z-index:100;display:none;float:left;" >
<asp:ImageButton ID="imgbtn1" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/misc/edit.png" />
<asp:ImageButton ID="imgbtn2" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/misc/Rename.png" />
</asp:Panel>
</asp:Panel>
</asp:PlaceHolder>
</td>
</tr>
</ItemTemplate>
<FooterTemplate>
</table>
</FooterTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>
I faced a challenge where all the divs were receiving the same ID when using the ItemCreated event in the code-behind. To demonstrate this problem more clearly:
protected void rptThreads_ItemCreated(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item ||
e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.AlternatingItem)
{
Panel editButtonsPanel = e.Item.FindControl("pnlEditButtons") as Panel;
editButtonsPanel.Visible = true;
Panel containerPanel = e.Item.FindControl("titleContainer") as Panel;
//Code snippet causing duplicate IDs
containerPanel.Attributes.Add("onmouseover", "ShowEditButtons('" + editButtonsPanel.ClientID + "');");
}
}
By omitting the above line of code, unique IDs are generated for each div:
<div id="rptThreads_ctl01_titleContainer" style="position:absolute;">
<a id="rptThreads_ctl01_lnkTitle" style="float:left;padding-right:10px;">1</a>
<div id="rptThreads_ctl01_pnlEditButtons"...
The main questions that arise from this scenario are why does this happen and how can we manage to assign unique IDs while setting JavaScript in the code-behind? While a workaround is available by embedding JavaScript directly in the ASPX file, it's crucial to achieve the uniqueness of IDs programmatically to meet specific server-side validation requirements.