C# – asp.net validation controls inhibiting button click event

asp.netc

OK, this is still causing problems two days later..
I have an asp.net form consisting of several text fields and a drop down list and a register button.

The problem:
When I apply client side validators to the text fields and drop down, the button click event is inhibited (for ALL buttons on page; not just for submit button but also for global navigation buttons inheriting from a MasterPage). Some fields have more than one validator (e.g. required field and reg ex).

When I comment out ANY of the validators, all buttons' click events function as expected.

I seems like a crazy work aroung to insert an extra unwanted 'dummy' validator just to comment out but it only seems to work with n-1 validators (i.e. no matter how many validators I have on the page, it will only work with ANY one of them commented out).

There are links all over the web to an article about this exact topic on aspalliance.com but sadly, the link is broken. Can anybody please suggest a solution?

Thanks, Daf.

UPDATED…Markup code as follows:

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPages/Admin.Master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="RegisterUser.aspx.cs" Inherits="LectureQuestions.Interface.Admin.RegisterUser" %>
<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="PageTitle" runat="server">Register New User
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleTxt" runat="server">Register New User
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content3" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">
    <table ID="tblInputField" runat="server" width="100%" cellspacing="15">
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="20%">First Name</td>
                <td width="60%">
                    <asp:TextBox ID="txtFirstName" runat="server" Width="98%"></asp:TextBox>
                </td>
                <td width="10%">
                    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="txtFirstNameRequired" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtFirstName" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="20%">Last Name</td>
                <td width="60%">
                    <asp:TextBox ID="txtLastName" runat="server" Width="98%"></asp:TextBox>
                </td>
                <td width="10%">
                    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="txtLastNameRequired" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtLastName" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="20%">E-mail</td>
                <td width="60%">
                    <asp:TextBox ID="txtEmail" runat="server" Width="98%"></asp:TextBox>
                </td>
                <td width="10%">
                    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="txtEmailRequired" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtEmail" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
                    <asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="txtEmailRx" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtEmail" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"
                        ValidationExpression="\w+([-+.']\w+)*@\w+([-.]\w+)*\.\w+([-.]\w+)*"></asp:RegularExpressionValidator>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="20%">Phone</td>
                <td width="60%">
                    <asp:TextBox ID="txtPhone" runat="server" Width="98%"></asp:TextBox>
                </td>
                <td width="10%">
                    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="txtPhoneRequired" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtPhone" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
                    <asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="txtPhoneRx" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtPhone" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"
                        ValidationExpression="^[0]\d{1,2}[\s,-]\d{5,7}$"></asp:RegularExpressionValidator>
                    <!-- solve validation probs -->
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="20%">Password</td>
                <td width="60%">
                    <asp:TextBox ID="txtPassword" runat="server" Width="98%"></asp:TextBox>
                </td>
                <td width="10%">
                    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="txtPasswordRequired" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtPassword" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="20%">User Type</td>
                <td width="60%">
                    <asp:DropDownList ID="txtUserType" runat="server" Width="99.5%">
                        <asp:ListItem></asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Student</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Lecturer</asp:ListItem>
                        <asp:ListItem>Admin</asp:ListItem>
                    </asp:DropDownList>
                </td>
                <td width="10%">
                    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="txtUserTypeRequired" runat="server" Display="Dynamic"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" ControlToValidate="txtUserType" ErrorMessage="*" ForeColor="Red"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="20%">Course</td>
                <td width="60%">
                    <asp:DropDownList ID="txtCourse" runat="server" Width="99.5%">
                        </asp:DropDownList>
                </td>
                <td width="10%"></td>
            </tr>
        </table>

        <table ID="tblAllValidationMsg" runat="server" width="100%" cellspacing="5">
            <tr>
                <td width="10%"></td>
                <td width="80%" align="center">
                    <asp:Label id="allValidationMsg" runat="server" height="22px" ForeColor="Red"></asp:Label>
                </td>
                <td width="10%"></td>
            </tr>
        </table>

        <table ID="tblCommandButtons" runat="server" width="100%" cellspacing="10">
            <tr>
                <td width="25%"></td>
                <td width="25%" align="right">
                    <asp:Button class="navbutton" ID="btnRegister" runat="server" causevalidation="true"
                        ValidationGroup="InputValidate" Text="Register User" OnClick="btnRegister_Click" />
                </td>
                <td width="25%" align="left">
                    <asp:Button class="navbutton" ID="btnCancel" runat="server" causevalidation="false"
                        Text="Cancel" onclick="btnCancel_Click" />
                </td>
                <td width="25x%"></td>
            </tr>
        </table>
</asp:Content>

Best Answer

To me it seems that you will need to use validation groups to tie the controls with your submit button. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2004/10/24/246945.aspx

Or ensure that all the other buttons that are not supposed to trigger validation have CausesValidation attribute set to False.

Related Solutions

C# – How to handle multiple submit buttons in ASP.NET MVC Framework

Here is a mostly clean attribute-based solution to the multiple submit button issue based heavily on the post and comments from Maarten Balliauw.

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)]
public class MultipleButtonAttribute : ActionNameSelectorAttribute
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Argument { get; set; }

    public override bool IsValidName(ControllerContext controllerContext, string actionName, MethodInfo methodInfo)
    {
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        var keyValue = string.Format("{0}:{1}", Name, Argument);
        var value = controllerContext.Controller.ValueProvider.GetValue(keyValue);

        if (value != null)
        {
            controllerContext.Controller.ControllerContext.RouteData.Values[Name] = Argument;
            isValidName = true;
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        return isValidName;
    }
}

razor:

<form action="" method="post">
 <input type="submit" value="Save" name="action:Save" />
 <input type="submit" value="Cancel" name="action:Cancel" />
</form>

and controller:

[HttpPost]
[MultipleButton(Name = "action", Argument = "Save")]
public ActionResult Save(MessageModel mm) { ... }

[HttpPost]
[MultipleButton(Name = "action", Argument = "Cancel")]
public ActionResult Cancel(MessageModel mm) { ... }

Update: Razor pages looks to provide the same functionality out of the box. For new development, it may be preferable.

C# – How to get a user’s client IP address in ASP.NET

Often you will want to know the IP address of someone visiting your website. While ASP.NET has several ways to do this one of the best ways we've seen is by using the "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR" of the ServerVariables collection.

Here's why...

Sometimes your visitors are behind either a proxy server or a router and the standard Request.UserHostAddress only captures the IP address of the proxy server or router. When this is the case the user's IP address is then stored in the server variable ("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR").

So what we want to do is first check "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR" and if that is empty we then simply return ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR").

While this method is not foolproof, it can lead to better results. Below is the ASP.NET code in VB.NET, taken from James Crowley's blog post "Gotcha: HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR returns multiple IP addresses"

protected string GetIPAddress()
{
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    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ipAddress))
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        string[] addresses = ipAddress.Split(',');
        if (addresses.Length != 0)
        {
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        }
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    return context.Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"];
}

VB.NET

Public Shared Function GetIPAddress() As String
    Dim context As System.Web.HttpContext = System.Web.HttpContext.Current
    Dim sIPAddress As String = context.Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR")
    If String.IsNullOrEmpty(sIPAddress) Then
        Return context.Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR")
    Else
        Dim ipArray As String() = sIPAddress.Split(New [Char]() {","c})
        Return ipArray(0)
    End If
End Function

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to handle multiple submit buttons in ASP.NET MVC Framework

C# – How to get a user’s client IP address in ASP.NET

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