Apr18Written by:Will
4/18/2007
From time to time we need to do something that the .Net framework doesn't immediately expose to us (without some finagling). In this instance, I wanted to override the attributes that the labels generated by the CheckBoxList webcontrol. However, I only wanted to modify this one instance of it.
From time to time we need to do something that the .Net framework doesn't immediately expose to us (without some finagling). In this instance, I wanted to override the attributes that the labels generated by the CheckBoxList webcontrol. However, I only wanted to modify this one instance of it.
In doing so, I needed to hook into the creation of the item collection of the CheckBoxList control, but I do not know of an event that we can use to do so. So, I instead ran a loop through the controls collection to find the instances of the CheckBoxList control and make the changes I wanted.
Here is an example:
Private Sub ReWriteCheckboxLabels()
Dim ctl As System.Web.UI.Control
Dim ctlCheck As WebControls.CheckBoxList
' loop through all of the controls in the UpdatePanel
' controls collection
For Each ctl In Me.UpdatePanel1.Controls(0).Controls
' make sure that the current control is the right kind
If ctl.GetType.ToString =
_"System.Web.UI.WebControls.CheckBoxList" Then
' yippee! it's a checkbox list - change the type
ctlCheck = CType(ctl, WebControls.CheckBoxList)
' only do this if there are items to change
Select Case ctlCheck.Items.Count
Case Is > 0
' force the label text to inherit the
' correct class
Dim item As ListItem
' loop through the items in the current
' checkbox list
For Each item In ctlCheck.Items
' wrap the text within the label
' to override it's CSS class
item.Text = "<span class=""" & _
"YOURCSSCLASSNAME"">" & _
item.Text & "</span>"
Next
Case Else
'do nothing
End Select
End If
Next
End Sub
In the previous example, I have at least one CheckBoxList control nexted within a MS AJAX UpdatePanel. In order to get to the collection of controls, I need to first reference the controls using the
Controls collection of the first Controls instance in the UpdatePanel.
If you are not nesting your controls a similar way, you can simply modify the first FOR EACH loop to be something more like this:
For Each ctl In Me.Controls
This would loop through all of the controls in the current page or user control.