Here is a simple method to update an aspnet Repeater calling a server method via ajax… here we go!
We make the ajax call with the favourite js framework or none at all. I use prototype anyway.
In our server method we do something like this:
List<Item> tobound = myDao.GetItems();
myRepeater.DataSource = tobound;
myRepeater.DataBind();
// and now the magic
// first of all we instance some usefull objects:
MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(stream);
HtmlTextWriter htw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw);
// then, we call the repeater’s own render method to render on our stream:
myRepeater.RenderControl(htw);
sw.Flush();
// ok, now we swap the stream in a byte array
Byte[] content = new Byte[stream.Length];
stream.Position = 0;
stream.Read(content, 0, stream.Length);
// and finally we transform the byte array in a string
string strContent = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding().GetString(content);
// now strContent contains all the xhtml code that renders our repeater.
// Simply put it in the response and let it be consumed by the javascript callback
Page.Response.Write(strContent);
And our client code in the callback will look like this:
$(‘myrepeaterdiv’).update(transport.responseText);
Here we have a very simple method which doesn’t make use of any server side ajax component, just the old plain asp:Repeater and a good javascript ajax library.
Bye!
