Reference ASP.NET control by ID in JavaScript?

Question

When ASP.NET controls are rendered their ids sometimes change, like if they are in a naming container. Button1 may actually have an id of ctl00_ContentMai

Answer 1

I don't think there's a single "best practice" for doing this. There's plenty of different pretty good practices. Here's ours:

Every control which has client-side functionality renders a script block inline, directly below the markup for the control:

    control markup

Each control has an accompanying JS like:

var CustomControl = function(id) {
    this.control = document.getElementByID(id);
    this.init();
};

CustomControl.prototype.init = function() {
    //do stuff to wire up relevant events
};

In the codebehind, we do something like:

class CustomControl : Control

override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
    writer.WriteBeginTag("span");
    writer.WriteAttribute("id", this.ClientID);
    writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar);
    //write control markup
    writer.WriteEndTag("span");
    writer.WriteBeginTag("script");
    writer.WriteAttribute("type", "text/javascript");
    writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar);
    writer.Write(
        string.Format("new CustomControl('{0}');", this.ClientID)
    );
    writer.WriteEndTag("script");
}