Accessing control attributes from static function

Question

Here's what I've got:

<textarea id="TextArea1" rows="6" cols="20" runat="server"></textarea>

and in the code-behind:

partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    [Webmethod()]
    public static void Data(int TestNum)
    {
        if (TestNum > 0) TextArea1.InnerText = "hello world";
    }
}

And I'm getting the following error:

Cannot refer to an instance member of a class from within a shared method or shared member initializer without an explicit instance of the class.

As I understand it, I need to declare an instance of the class within my shared function like so:

_Default NewInstance = New _Default();
NewInstance.TextArea1.InnerText = "hello world";

My question then is, is there any way I can avoid doing this? Is this bad practice and what kind of memory or performance penalty will I incur for doing this?

Thank you.

Edit: I should mention that the Static declaration is necessary for WebMethods

Answer 1

You need to remove the static modifier from your Data method.

Answer 2

If the intent is to change the textarea on the page via an asynchronous callback, your best bet is to wrap it in an UpdatePanel or use something like JQuery to do the ajax call by hand. In the latter case you would only reference the textarea from the javascript and fetch the content asynchronously.