ASP.Net Web Form + Ajax Data lost on post back. Possible cause ? Ajax or changing visible property

Question

I have two Repeater controls, each hosted in a user control. Both user controls are contained in the same aspx page. Only one User Control is visible at any one time. The repeaters are comprised of checkboxes, and text boxes for user input.

The aspx page is configured with an Ajax ScriptManager; and contains several Ajax UpdatePanels. These UpdatePanels result in partial page post backs when text is changed in a textbox control in controls on the aspx page (this is not the behaviour for the Repeaters in the User Controls). Through use of several AsyncPostBackTriggers, various controls contained in the other UpdatePanels on the page have their content refreshed in response to the partial page post backs they are configured be notified about.

Depending on a radio button group selection, I set the visible property to true or false – as appropriate for the User control containing a repeater control. The Repeater control is then populated with data using databinding. All of this works.

However, when the Submit button is clicked, the Repeater control contains no data. Given that I am not dynamically adding the Controls containing the Repeater controls (but using Visible true / false). I would have thought that the State of the fields and the data in the visible control would be preserved during the post back.

The User Controls are contained within the UpdatePanel that contains the Submit Button. I have explicitly Enabled View state without any effect. Am I correct in assuming that I should not have to do any explicit handling of data changes the user makes (via client side script and manipulation of an Data Structure Representing the Repeater Data); and the View State should maintain the data I need to access on the server when submitted?

I do not believe that it is the User Control visible state changes that are causing the issue because when the page is initially loaded on of the User controls is populated with dummy rows (so it displays).

I am suspicious that because the visible state of the controls is changed during partial page post back, that the Page View State ends up with no knowledge of the User Control and therefore cannot track its data (or changes).

I have investigated a lot of similar sounding posts but so far do not feel that I have come across a solid explanation that can help me understand and fix the issue.

Hopefully someone can help.

Answer 1

I must be the only person who was unaware of the finer points of DataBind() method; be it called on a specific control being bound to data; or on the page itself. I hope the below helps others who find themselves in a position where data binding appears to be inexplicably lost'.

My problem was that my page was pretty complex. It has several User Controls on it. The problem was that in these User Controls, I was calling Page.DataBind() in the Page_Load event handler to 're-bind' the page data on PostBacks. This resulted in the Repeater control located on another User Control, to lose its data binding.

Removing the Page.DataBind method call from each of the User Controls on the Page_Load event handler method resolved the problem. It had nothing to do with Update panels / refreshes etc.