How to get all web form elements value

Question

I have a simple web form which consists of several text box and drop downs. I need a way to get the value of all of the elements from the start in a list. I know I can individually get the value using textbox1.value but I wouldn't know how many textbox/dropdown there are in the form. For example

<form id="form1" runat="server">
    <div>
        Tier: 
            <asp:DropDownList ID="Tier" runat="server">
                        <asp:ListItem>Select Tier</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Tier1</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Tire2</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Tier3</asp:ListItem>
            </asp:DropDownList>

        Author: 
            <asp:DropDownList ID="Author" runat="server">
                        <asp:ListItem>Select Author</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Author1</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Author2</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Author3</asp:ListItem>
            </asp:DropDownList>

        Quotation For:
            <asp:TextBox ID="questionfor" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
    </div>

How do I get the value in a list ? How do I loop through them ? The final aim is to store the element Id and its value in the database. Hence along with the value I need the id as well. For example in the database I will have two column elementName(which is the elementID) and its corresponding value.

you can do this several ways.. if you understand `Lambda's` and how to do a foreach you can do this based on the Controls type.. or you could do it the old fashion way and use a `foreach(Control ctrl in Controls)` checking if typs is `DropDowList` or TextBox..etc.. pretty simple actually — MethodMan, Feb 29 '16 at 19:43

MethodMan · Answer 1 · 2016-02-29T20:08:45.050

0

here is something you can try

Protected void GetControlValues(ControlCollection  controls)
{
    var holdList = new List<string>();
    foreach(Control c in controls)
    {
        if(c is System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox)
        {
            holdList.Add(c.Text); //this will get the value of the TextBox 
        } 
        else if (c.controls.Count > 0)
        {
            GetControlValues(c.Controls)
        }
    }
}

if you want to get the ID value then you could check if(c.ID == textBoxId.ID) then add that textBoxId.Text to the List you can have multiple if checks inside this foreach loop if you know the types of controls you are checking..

edited Feb 29 '16 at 20:08

answered Feb 29 '16 at 19:51

MethodMan

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Where is the recursion? – Uwe Keim Feb 29 '16 at 19:53
BTW: _No_ control is of type `ListItem`. – Uwe Keim Feb 29 '16 at 19:54
I will edit the answer to show recursion using a foreach(Controls loop – MethodMan Feb 29 '16 at 19:56
why just dropdownlist? Will this also take care of textbox? or for that matter any other elements like checkbox, etc ? – user3342812 Feb 29 '16 at 19:57
you need you can do this for every control if you check the types using a `foreach(Control ctrl in Controls)` you need to check check using `if(c is TextBox)` for example.. it's pretty straight forward ..I will do edit and show you how using a `TextBox` then it will make more sense – MethodMan Feb 29 '16 at 20:04
there seems to be something wrong with controls. It shows count as 5 when i have more than 5 elements. And they are represented at {System.Web.UI.LiteralControl} – user3342812 Feb 29 '16 at 20:15
then you need to change the code to check if it's `System.Web.UI.LiteralControl` – MethodMan Feb 29 '16 at 20:16

How to get all web form elements value

1 Answers1