Close WebForm Form

[Joel Finkel]

Please excuse what may be a mind-blowingly simple question, but I cannot find the answer anywhere.

I have a webform that displays a list of data. The user click on a link and is displayed a second webform that shows details and allows her to enter new information, which is stored in the database. She may also press a Cancel button.

In either case, after the new data are stored or if the Cancel button in pressed, I want this webform to vanish, leaving only the original webform, which then has to rebind its data, so that they are updated.

QUESTION: How do I close the second webform, where the new informaiton has been entered (or cancelled). so that it vanishes? I know I can set up a Javascript close() command, but I would like to know what the canonical method is using the .NET architecture.

In addition, how does the first webform know when to rebind the data to obtain the updated values for the row that changed?

Thanks in advance for all suggestions and pointers into the documentation.

-Joel Finkel
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Mark Kamoski]

Joel--

Here are some thoughts.

Regarding the question about closing a form, (which in your example below
seems to mean "closing a browser window"), it seems that this a distinctly
client-side thing to do. As far as I can tell, JavaScript must be used in
this case; if not, then I've been lied to many times. However, if, instead
of opening a new window, you had a post from one page to the next and then
back to the first, then that would be easier and DotNet surely could handle
it. Personally, I am against opening new browser windows (unless absolutely
necessary) because I like the control DotNet provides on the server and I
try to avoid JavaScript because it can be turned off manually by the
enduser. But, of course, there are 2 camps of thoughts here; (I'll leave it
to the other side to argue their "case" for JavaScript and/or opening
browser windows.)

Regarding the question about telling a page to refresh, a message or flag
of some kind must be used. If you use JavaScript to close the form, then
you can simple re-navigate to the form. Session, QueryString, and a few
other mechanisms can capture this flag. However, even for this question, I
recommend using a wizard-style navigation. Show Page1. Click link and show
Page2. Enter information and Save/Cancel, redirecting to Page1, and so on.

That's what I think, FWIW.

HTH.

--Mark





Please excuse what may be a mind-blowingly simple question, but I cannot
find the answer anywhere.

I have a webform that displays a list of data. The user click on a link
and is displayed a second webform that shows details and allows her to
enter new information, which is stored in the database. She may also press
a Cancel button.

In either case, after the new data are stored or if the Cancel button in
pressed, I want this webform to vanish, leaving only the original webform,
which then has to rebind its data, so that they are updated.

QUESTION: How do I close the second webform, where the new informaiton has
been entered (or cancelled). so that it vanishes? I know I can set up a
Javascript close() command, but I would like to know what the canonical
method is using the .NET architecture.

In addition, how does the first webform know when to rebind the data to
obtain the updated values for the row that changed?

Thanks in advance for all suggestions and pointers into the documentation.

-Joel Finkel
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Joel Finkel]

Mark,

Thank you. Your answer provided exactly the insight I needed. In the web
environemnt, I cannot use the modal windows paradigm. I have to use a
single-window wizard paradigm. Once you triggered this insight, I was able
to easily modify my code. It took me a while to find the two .NET ways of
going from page to page, however.

1) Response.Redirect()

2) Server.Transfer()

It is interesting that I missed this in the introductory documentation I
read. Maybe like many, I just plugged everything in and fiddled with the
knobs before reading every line of the owner's manual. On the other hand,
"Server.Transfer" is found on only two pages in the .NET Framework
Developer's Guide and "Response.Redirect" only appears on three pages, all
of which have to do with user authentication. It seems like this is a
pretty basic technique that one needs to know about!

Thanks again.

/Joel