Disable all textboxes in a page.

MY1201

Hello. I have a problem - and it's probably me not understanding the concept - but I want to programatically disable all controls in my aspx page - if the user watching the page is not authorized to edit the content. Now this should be an easy task, so I've tried a couple of methods like looping through the page's Controls property and have all textboxes set their Enabled property to false. The following code does not work. I'm using a MasterPage, but I can't think of anything, that makes this a problem. When I "ask" the MasterPage to print out the "count" for it's controls property it says there is about 5 items in the list. Although the page contains around 10 TextBoxes! So what am I misunderstanding here? Anyway here's the code:

foreach (Control c in Page.Controls)
{
switch (c.GetType().ToString())
{
case "System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox":
((TextBox)c).Enabled = false;
break;
case "System.Web.UI.WebControls.DropDownList":
((DropDownList)c).Enabled = false;
break;
case "System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton":
((ImageButton)c).Enabled = false;
break;
default:
break;
}
}

I hope someone can help! Thanks in advance. Best Regards Soeren

Michael Sync

The easiest way to do is showing "50% transparency image" with higher z-order. All you need to do is that you hav to create one gif image with transparency background. (file size should not be too big.) set the position of that image to absolute. and set the width and height of this image to 100%.. finally, set the zorder of image to highest value..(you may check out "LightBox" javascript toolkit.) hopefully, you got my point. :)

Thanks and Regards, Michael Sync ( Blog: http://michaelsync.net) If you want to thank me for my help, please vote my message. Thank you.

Harini N K

Hi I think better way for disabling fields is to write javascript function. I have added sample code below. Hope this helps. 'aspnetForm' - Form name of a web form
Example:
function DisableFields(vAccessRights) { //parameter - vAccessRights - to check access rights for particular user.. elm=document.aspnetForm.elements; for(i=0; i < elm.length ; i++) { if(elm[i].type=="checkbox") { var chkboxId = elm[i].id; //add code to enable / disable field } else if(elm[i].type=="textbox") { var txtboxId = elm[i].id; //add code to enable / disable field here } } } - Harini

anufabian

I had some what the same problem . Finally I had put the controls in a panel and do something like this Dim ctrls As Control For Each ctrls In Me.Panel1.Controls If TypeOf ctrls Is TextBox Then Dim tb As TextBox tb = ctrls tb.Text = DateTime.Today tb.Enabled = False (instead u can manipulate any property here) End If Next

Sandeep Akhare

Use PlaceHoldet instead of panel :)

Thanks and Regards Sandeep

badgrs

All the ansers above have severe flaws. Doing it client side is a VERY bad idea, especially if security if the reason for disabling them in the first place. Your code is pretty much correct, the problem is that controls can contain other controls so your foreach loop will only disable the top-level ones. You need to put that in a function that recursevly calls itself if the control has children. Heres one I use:

private void DisableInputs(Control control)
    {
        foreach (Control c in control.Controls)
        {
            if (typeof(HtmlControl).IsInstanceOfType(c))
            {
                ((HtmlControl)c).Disabled = true;
            }
            else if (typeof(WebControl).IsInstanceOfType(c))
            {
                ((WebControl)c).Enabled = false;
            }
            DisableInputs(c);
        }
    }

badgrs

As a follow-up to what I said about security - even setting the disabled attribute server-side won't stop the user being able to submit changed data, there is always a way (eg Firebug). You'll also want to perform some sort of authenitcation check in whatever code handles the posted data.