Updating a control in ASP.NET using ASPxGridView after a postback

I’ve recently ran into a strange problem in ASP.NET. Being a desktop developer, I like to put interactions in my applications. What I wanted to do was very simple: After a grid postback (grid operation like update or create/delete), I wanted to show a status message to the user. This can be done easily with a button click event but since I was using DevExpress ASPxGridView, I couldn’t bind the UpdatePanel events to it’s postback event (I did but it didn’t work). I tried ways to force partial render but none gave the result I wanted. Here, I’m giving the solution I came up with:

It uses an UpdatePanel and Javascript.
The Javascript part:

<script type="text/javascript">
function updateStatusText() {
__doPostBack("< %= UpdatePanel.ClientID%>", '');
}
</script>

What we do here is simple, we add a Javascript function which forces a postback of the desired control (UpdatePanel in our case)

Here’s the UpdatePanel control:

<asp :ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager" runat="server"></asp>
<asp :UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel" runat="server" UpdateMode="Conditional">
<contenttemplate>
< %=StatusMessage%>
</contenttemplate>
</asp>

It uses a variable as content template.
The variable:

public string StatusMessage
{
get
{
return (Session["statusMessage"] == null) ? string.Empty : Session["statusMessage"].ToString();
}
set
{
Session["statusMessage"] = value;
}
}

Finally, add this to your ASPxGridView properties:

<clientsideevents EndCallback="function(s, e) { updateStatusText(); }" />

What we did: We told ASPxGridView to call updateStatusText() Javascript method after it’s callback is finished. And we forced a postback targeting the desired control (UpdatePanel) to update it’s properties. Since we use an UpdatePanel, you will see a partial page render (not whole page reloading) which is bound to our Session variable, set to show the status text available. I played with extra control postbacks but UpdatePanel is the best choice if you want to see AJAX in action.

Enjoy,
Bora Bilgin