I inherited an ASP.Net 2.0 web application project that was in desperate need of repair. One thing I quickly noticed was the amount of JavaScript scripts that were added on the Page_Load to the click event of LinkButton controls within a template column in a GridView control.

The scripts would add the JavaScript Confirm(“”) function to the click event of each control to prompt a user with a hard-coded message on whether to continue the action or cancel. The problem with this approach was that on clicking cancel the post-back would still occur and as a result the delete/edit/insert action would be performed. After spending what seemed like days trying to find the cause of the post-back and why even though the JavaScript function returned the value to the client click it would still carry on it’s server side action.

I searched and searched on the cause of this problem and found everything from creating a page level script to change the 0 and 1 to the respective true and false values that get returned from the JavaScript call. This did the exact same thing as just returning 1 or 0 based on the Ok or Cancel button selection. Nothing seemed to work and the grid wasn’t setup in any special way. That was until I found the ConfirmButtonExtender control as part of the AJAXToolkit.

After including a ConfirmButtonExtender within the template column with the control to validate set to my LinkButton did the JavaScript confirm dialog actually do what it was supposed to. Now when clicking on a LinkButton the confirm dialog appears, displays my ConfirmText property, and then based on the user action of clicking Ok or Cancel will actually stop the post-back from happening. Fantastic, the exact fix I was looking for, and it had the added advantage of exposing a control on the code-behind that could have the displayed confirmation text easily changed without having to consciously worry about JavaScript hooks to the client click event.

Now all I have to do is add my ConfirmButtonExtender to my TemplateField as such:

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Delete">
<ItemTemplate>                           
<asp:LinkButton ID="lbtndelete" runat="server" CommandName="Delete" Text="Delete" />                           
<ajaxToolKit:ConfirmButtonExtender ID="cbeDelete" runat="server" TargetControlID="lbtndelete" />                       
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

On the GridView I can simply add an event handler for the OnRowDataBound event to programmatically assign my ConfirmText from say a Resource file or possibly other mechanism.

OnRowDataBound="GrvAdmin_RowDataBound"

protected void GrvAdmin_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)       
{           
((AjaxControlToolkit.ConfirmButtonExtender)e.Row.FindControl("cbeDelete")).ConfirmText = Resources.Resource.CONFIRM_DELETE_USER;
}