[Solved] add html instead of update whole panel

[goyaweb]

I have a scenario where when I press a button an extra textbox needs to be shown. Everytime I click the button an extra textbox must be shown (so possibility to add unlimited textboxes). Unfortunately I can only add the textbox to a predefined updatepanel. Therefore everytime the whole panel gets sent over ajax line. How would I only send the html for 1 textbox and add that html to the page without refreshing the whole panel everytime?

[Steve]

Hi goyaweb,

The MS AJAX and our own ajax framework preserve the page lifecycle and ViewState and therefore, you cannot achieve the desired functionality with ajax requests. In order to add dynamically controls to a control collection, you have to always update this control and it will always send the complete html of that control.

Greetings,
Steve
the Telerik team

Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center

[goyaweb]

thanks for the reply.

Anybody a smart workaround for this?

[Geoff Van Brunt]

Why don't you just add regular html textboxes (not controls) to the page on the client (without post or callback), name them something like (id="textbox1") etc then loop through them when posted or called back by using Request.Params?

In other words, is there some reason you have to post back to the server to "create" them?

[goyaweb]

Hi Geoff,
Great point! People tend to use AJAX for the wrong thing I agree.
The reason I was using it is that the textboxes I was talking about are quite fancy textboxes, namely a combination of 2 DatePickers and 2 TimePickers. Is there a clientside API to add these Telerik controls using javascript?
Thanks,
Yannick

[Sebastian]

Hi goyaweb,

Our date/time picker controls will preserve their lifecycle and viewstate only when added server-side following the conventions for dynamic controls creation in ASP.NET. Since our pickers are server controls, pure client-side instantiation is not possible as this will break some of their features/proper functioning (as the server will not be "aware" that new controls has been built on the client machine).

I hope this explanation makes sense.

Best regards,
Stephen
the Telerik team

Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center

[Geoff Van Brunt]

As Steve mentioned in a previous post, it is currently not possible to create a server control on the client with ASP.Net 3.5 or earlier. This is due to ViewState, page validation etc. Perhaps MS will consider this down the road.

As for your problem, here is what I suggest. Use a RadWindow to pop up the complex control with all the date and time pickers etc. Then pass the values back to the main page and create regular textboxes there, but have them be uneditable. You can even add edit buttons beside them to open the RadWindow and edit them etc. If you use caching with the RadWindow you won't have ANY postbacks except for the first call to open the window.

[jfs67]

This article by Jeff Prosise on MSDN might help you with some ideas. It was helpful for me:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/06/WickedCode/