ASP.NET Handling the DataList control events

This chapter excerpt from ASP.NET Data Presentation Controls Essentials by Joydip Kanjilal, is printed with permission from Packt Publishing , Copyright 2007.

Handling Events

The Repeater, DataList, and DataGrid controls support event bubbling. What is event bubbling? Event Bubbling refers to the ability of a control to capture the events in a child control and bubble up the event to the container whenever an event occurs. The DataList control supports the following six events: 

ItemCreated
ItemCommand
EditCommand
UpdateCommand
DeleteCommand
CancelCommand

We will now discuss how we can work with the events of the DataList control. In order to handle events when working with a DataList control, include a Button or a LinkButton control in the DataList control. These controls have click events that can be used to bubble up the triggered event to the container control, that is, the DataList.

The following code snippet illustrates how you can attach a handler to an ItemCommand event of a DataList control:

<asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" onItemCommand = "ItemCommandEventHandler"/>

The corresponding handler that gets called whenever the event is fi red is as follows:

void ItemCommandEventHandler (Object src, DataListCommandEventArgs e ....)
{
      //Some event handling code
}

Simi larly, you can handle the ItemCreated event by specifying the handler in the .aspx file as follows:
<asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" onItemCreated = "ItemCreatedEventHandler" />

The corresponding handler that is triggered whenever this event occurs is as follows.

void ItemCreatedEventHandler ( Object src, DataListCommandEventArgs e )
{
       //Some event handling code     
}

Similarly, you can use the CancelCommand event by specifying the event handler in your .aspx file as follows:

<asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" onCancelCommand = .........."CancelCommandEventHandler" />

The corresponding handler that is triggered whenever this event occurs is as follows.

void ItemCreatedEventHandler ( Object src, DataListCommandEventArgs e )
{
        //Some event handling code
}

Similarly, you can use the CancelCommand event by specifying the event handler in your .aspx file as follows:

<asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" onCancelCommand = .........."CancelCommandEventHandler" />

The corresponding event handler that would get fi red is as follows:

void CancelCommandEventHandler ( Object src, DataListCommandEventArgs e )
{
      //Some event handling code
}

You can handle any of the other events similarly and execute your event handlers appropriately.