Accessing Dynamically Created RadButtons on PostBack

[Tom Rasmussen]

I have a user setup form that contains several RadButtons for the individual permissions (checkboxes).  The RadButtons are created at runtime on page init then added to a fieldset:

var availablePermissions = Permissions.AllPermissions(PermissionCategory.Client);
foreach (var permission in availablePermissions)
{
    //create the permission checkbox
    var checkbox = new RadButton
                    {
                        AutoPostBack = false,
                        ToggleType = ButtonToggleType.CheckBox,
                        ButtonType = RadButtonType.ToggleButton,
                        ID = "Permission_" + permission.Name,
                        Value = permission.Name,
                        ToolTip = permission.Description,
                        Text = permission.DisplayName,
                        Checked = workUser.HasPermission(permission)
                    };
        PermissionFieldSet.Controls.Add(checkbox);
}

This part of the code works great.  The permissions are added and displayed appropriately.  The problem is now accessing the controls on postback.  Since they were added at runtime and can be varied in number I need to iterate all possible permissions checked.  The original plan was to get any Request.Form elements that matched the ID pattern of "Permission_" like so:

public bool SaveOrUpdateUser()
{
    /* Various other user setup fields */

    //get all form fields that contain the "Permission_" identifier
    var permissions = Request.Form.AllKeys.Where(key => key.Contains("Permission_")).Select(key => Request.Form[key]).ToList();
}

While this call does successfully retrieve the permissions, the information returned is a serialized version of the RadButton control:

{\"text\":\"ButtonText\",\"value\":\"ButtonValue\",\"checked\":true,\"target\":\"\",\"navigateUrl\":\"\",\"commandName\":\"\",\"commandArgument\":\"\",\"autoPostBack\":false,\"selectedToggleStateIndex\":0,\"readOnly\":false}

So, how can I deserialize this back into a RadButton to be able to interpret the checked status of each of my permissions?  I know I could manually breakdown the string, but that seems like a workaround at best.

Thanks.

Tom

[Slav]

Hello Tom,

On postback you can iterate through the controls in PermissionFieldSet and get only the ones that are of type RadButton. The following code snippet demonstrates this approach:

foreach (Control control in PermissionFieldSet.Controls)
{
    if (control.GetType().Name.ToString() == "RadButton")
    {
        RadButton button = control as RadButton;
        // here is your logic
    }
}

I hope this helps. Feel free to contact us again if you run into more difficulties.

Regards,
Slav
the Telerik team

[Tom Rasmussen]

I guess the simple answer was staring me in the face.  Thanks.