Asp – anchor tag inside a repeater with runat = “server” acting strange

If you don't want to use an ItemCommand and want to just loop through the Repeater's items collection, so you have one "save" button at the bottom of the page, you can do it like this:

foreach(RepeaterItem itm in MyRepeater.Items)
{
     TextBox t = (TextBox)(itm.FindControl("TextBox1"));
     // do something with it.

}

Of course, you'll need to make sure that the TextBox1 in the ASPX has the Runat="Server" attribute.

The problem with using Repeater1.FindControl(..)... is that you can't tell which particular Label or LinkButton is being targeted. It's a repeater, so each such item gets assigned a unique identifier as part of the RepeaterItemCollection. In the markup you name it "lnAdd" but that's not what it will be once generated etc.

For reference, here's the code you said worked from the other post:

protected void btnUpdate_OnClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Button b = sender as Button;
        if (b != null)
        {
            RepeaterItem ri = b.Parent as RepeaterItem;
            if (ri != null)
            {
                string name = null;

                //Fetch data
                TextBox txtName = ri.FindControl("txtName") as TextBox;

I'll explain the reason the above works. First, the button that was clicked is cast from the sender object. We know it's a button since it's the Update button's click handler. Next, we also know that the button appears in a repeater, so it's parent is a RepeaterItem. That's how the ri variable is initialized and cast. With ri available to us, using FindControl on it will now find the given control in that particular RepeaterItem.