How can I reset a asp.net form after postback?

Question

I am trying after the btnCreate_OnClick event to reset the form to it's default value just like the first page_load. The problem is after PostBack, every textbox and other controls, reloads the ViewState value. I cannot deactivate viewstate because of server event on DropDownList selection. The only way I found so far is to Redirect to self after the click event, but this loads the page twice and is therefor a bad solution. I have try ViewState.Clear() and update the UpdatePanel, but was unsuccessful.

I could do a loop for all controls and set the txtXXXXX.Text == "", but I'm quite sure it's not the best idea.

Something like Page.Reset() would have been just perfect but it doesn't exist.

Any thought on this problem of mine?

Thanks

Answer 1

One way, not necessarily ideal, is to reset the values to their defaults using Javascript. If it is a large form, it can be ugly, but will prevent the need to do a self-redirection.

You also might try Server.Transfer instead of Response.Redirect(/self/)

Answer 2

If workable, I usually just use Response.Redirect to reload the same page from scratch.

An initial GET request to a page usually costs less than subsequent POSTs anyway, so there's not much reason to avoid it.

Answer 3

Self redirecting gets tricky because of viewstate.

There is an html input type "reset" for buttons, but I'm not sure what or any integration msft has put into viewstate/asp.net for this. It generally works for simple javascript forms.

ex:

<input type="button" value="Reset" onclick="document.<formId>.reset();">

from google ----^

Answer 4

In our case the best performance solution was to set manually for each control the default value in the click event ex:

textbox1.Text = null;
textbox2.Text = null;

This avoid the double page_load and the loop. We don't event have to update the UpdatePanel since it executes before render.

Maybe in a more complex web application we would have to Redirect as most people seem to accept this as a solution.

Setting per control the default value was better suited to our case.

Thank you

Answer 5

We can reset the ASP.Net Form Page with just 2 lines of code

protected void Button_Reset_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { Session["ViewState"] = null; Response.Redirect("/Roster/DRAC/Create.aspx"); }