UniqueName property with blank spaces breaking the application

[PPSDevs]

I use RadGrid extensively in my application and use the UniqueName property as well. I have several columns with UniqueName property that have blank spaces in it(e.g. uniquename="Order ID"). Until now I was using the 2011 Q1 release of ASP.NET AJAX controls and  
it was working fine.

I recently upgraded to 2012 Q1 (SP1) release and my app is breaking now every where I have UniqueName property defined with blank spaces. Is it something new introduced in this release? Is there any work around so that I don't have to make changes everywhere I am using the uniquename property in my application? 

Manjeet

[Eyup]

Hi Manjeet,

Thank you for contacting us.

The following summarize the significant change that you are observing in your project.

• RadGrid issue:

We have prevented the UniqueName property of grid columns from containing spaces. The breaking change is documented in the release notes for version Q3 2011 of Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX.

We are aware that unfortunately for customers with large applications this decision means revisiting a lot of pages to make the changes. There were number of reasons that lead us to this measure. The UniqueName of a grid column is used heavily in the naming of server controls contained by the column. Having spaces in server control IDs is not a supported scenario and can potentially lead to a number of issues in the control and page life cycle.

Additionally, the UniqueName is serialized to the client-side and used by the client RadGrid component and its related child components. A number of column APIs, as well as filtering and sorting rely on the column UniqueName. There is certainly a large number of scenarios where these APIs break when the column UniqueName contains spaces.

For these reasons, we have decided to proactively prevent spaces from getting in the UniqueName of grid columns. We believe it's for the better. It blocks a great deal of problems that customers hit upon afterwards.

Currently, the only way of having spaces in the UniqueName of columns is when you have auto-generated columns and RadGrid's data source contains data fields with spaces in the field name. For example, using an SqlDataSource control, you can fetch SQL results from a table containing spaces in the column names. These spaces make it to the UniqueName of RadGrid columns. In these cases, the danger of breaking APIs and issues in the control life cycle is still at hand and we do not recommend this practice.

Thank you for your understanding and sorry for the caused inconvenience. Please feel free to turn to us if you have further questions.

All the best,
Eyup
the Telerik team

[Ashish]

hello Telerik Team,

I have used RadGrid in my site extensively, and also I have used the “UniqueName” property, and at many scenerios the UniqueName contains spaces. Recently I have updated the Telerik version to “2012.2.724.35” and after that we are facing too many issues related to “UniqueName” contains spaces.
Older Version we were using  : 2011.1.519.35
New Version currently we are using  : 2012.2.724.35
I know that with the recent upgrade, Telerik have been fixed the “UniqueName” property must not contains spaces but due to this fix, in my application we have to revisit a lot of pages and need to do the changes manually, I have gone through the above blog and wants to know that did Telrik have found any workaround for this issue so that although the “uniqueName” property contains spaces but still it should be allowed in the RadGrid. It will save a lot of time at our end.

Thanks,
Ashish

[Eyup]

Hi Ashish,

I understand that this change is a big step for you and you have to do big deal of maintenance to update your application, however, I am afraid there is no workaround in this case. White spaces in UniqueNames are no longer supported. You could find the reasons in my previous reply.

Thank you for your understanding and sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,
Eyup
the Telerik team

[SUNIL]

Is this true for Q2 2015 and Q3 2015 versions also?

[Eyup]

Hello Sunil,

Yes, the UniqueName property should not contain empty spaces. There should be error thrown stating: "UniqueName cannot contain spaces". If you do not see the error, you can temporarily disable any AJAX on the page and try again.

Regards,
Eyup
Telerik

[Mehmet]

Merhaba Eyüp Bey,

Sormak istediğim bir soru var. Telerik report yazıcıya dosya gönderirken rapor ismi ile gönderiyor sanırım. Bu isim benzersiz bir isim olabilme imkanı var mı yoksa sadece rapor ismi şeklinde mi gönderilebiliyor? Örneğin rapor ismi Report1 ise yazıcıya sürekli Report1 şeklinde dosyayı gönderiyor bu dosya adının her yazdırmada farklı bi adda olması mümkün mü?