What to use: Callback, AjAX or simple Javascript in Asp.net app.

Question

I am at a bit of a loss as far as what is the best tool for the job would be:

What I need: A parent page has a link, when clicked a pop-up will pop up with a gridview and a save button.

If the user saved the gridview, the parent page should refresh and change, in other words I need to be able to pass data between client and server. Perhaps, I should mention that Save button will save the data from the gridview in the database, and i would like the pop-up to be closed, and the parent page refreshed.

I am using ASP.net 2.0 and currently have no AJAx library installed. I looked at CallBack in Asp.net and inclined to use it as it seems the easiest in this case.

EDIT: perhaps I should also mention that I would like the parent page to be inactive while the child window is up......

What would you recommend to use? Thanks!

Answer 1

I would definitely use Javascript for this. Depending on whether you want to open a new window or use a pseudo-popup-dialog using javascript. For the former you would have some javascript on both pages interacting with each other, which while simple, is a bit ugly. For the latter approach, you would used Ajax to do the save, and then use javascript to refresh the page.

Answer 2

I don't understand why I need AJAX to do the save. The user will press a button explicitly. The only reason why I would use AJAX here is for the sake of usability; please correct me if I am wrong. (I am not an AJAX person)