On postback, how can I check which control cause postback in Page_Init event

Solution 1:

I see that there is already some great advice and methods suggest for how to get the post back control. However I found another web page (Mahesh blog) with a method to retrieve post back control ID.

I will post it here with a little modification, including making it an extension class. Hopefully it is more useful in that way.

/// <summary>
/// Gets the ID of the post back control.
/// 
/// See: http://geekswithblogs.net/mahesh/archive/2006/06/27/83264.aspx
/// </summary>
/// <param name = "page">The page.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static string GetPostBackControlId(this Page page)
{
    if (!page.IsPostBack)
        return string.Empty;

    Control control = null;
    // first we will check the "__EVENTTARGET" because if post back made by the controls
    // which used "_doPostBack" function also available in Request.Form collection.
    string controlName = page.Request.Params["__EVENTTARGET"];
    if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(controlName))
    {
        control = page.FindControl(controlName);
    }
    else
    {
        // if __EVENTTARGET is null, the control is a button type and we need to
        // iterate over the form collection to find it

        // ReSharper disable TooWideLocalVariableScope
        string controlId;
        Control foundControl;
        // ReSharper restore TooWideLocalVariableScope

        foreach (string ctl in page.Request.Form)
        {
            // handle ImageButton they having an additional "quasi-property" 
            // in their Id which identifies mouse x and y coordinates
            if (ctl.EndsWith(".x") || ctl.EndsWith(".y"))
            {
                controlId = ctl.Substring(0, ctl.Length - 2);
                foundControl = page.FindControl(controlId);
            }
            else
            {
                foundControl = page.FindControl(ctl);
            }

            if (!(foundControl is IButtonControl)) continue;

            control = foundControl;
            break;
        }
    }

    return control == null ? String.Empty : control.ID;
}

Update (2016-07-22): Type check for Button and ImageButton changed to look for IButtonControl to allow postbacks from third party controls to be recognized.

Solution 2:

Here's some code that might do the trick for you (taken from Ryan Farley's blog)

public static Control GetPostBackControl(Page page)
{
    Control control = null;

    string ctrlname = page.Request.Params.Get("__EVENTTARGET");
    if (ctrlname != null && ctrlname != string.Empty)
    {
        control = page.FindControl(ctrlname);
    }
    else
    {
        foreach (string ctl in page.Request.Form)
        {
            Control c = page.FindControl(ctl);
            if (c is System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button)
            {
                control = c;
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return control;
}

Solution 3:

Either directly in form parameters or

string controlName = this.Request.Params.Get("__EVENTTARGET");

Edit: To check if a control caused a postback (manually):

// input Image with name="imageName"
if (this.Request["imageName"+".x"] != null) ...;//caused postBack

// Other input with name="name"
if (this.Request["name"] != null) ...;//caused postBack

You could also iterate through all the controls and check if one of them caused a postBack using the above code.

Solution 4:

If you need to check which control caused the postback, then you could just directly compare ["__EVENTTARGET"] to the control you are interested in:

if (specialControl.UniqueID == Page.Request.Params["__EVENTTARGET"])
{
    /*do special stuff*/
}

This assumes you're just going to be comparing the result from any GetPostBackControl(...) extension method anyway. It may not handle EVERY situation, but if it works it is simpler. Plus, you won't scour the page looking for a control you didn't care about to begin with.