Determining what controls needs to be recreated on page load when using multiple Update Panels

I have a page with multiple update panels, each containing dynamically created User Controls that contain a button control.

When The button in a control is clicked the control no longer exists in the page load event and so the click event of the button within the control cannot be raised.

To get round this I am currently recreating ALL the controls on the page in each page load event, but this is obviously causing a lot of unneccesary page updating. In any given partial postback, the only control(s) that need to be recreated are the ones in the update panel containing the control that has been clicked.

How then can I best identify which control has been clicked in page_load and then only recreate the controls in the relevant update panel to be able top then access the click event of that control?

I know I can do the following

if (ScriptManager1.IsInAsyncPostBack)
{
   string clickedControlId = ScriptManager1.AsyncPostBackSourceElementID
}

But this isnt hugely useful as knowing the ID of the control doesnt neccesarily help me identify which Update Panel it belonged to. Is there a way of adding a command argument to the control when it is created at run time and reading that command argument in the page load event during the partial postback?

If not, any other suggestions?

Many thanks

Stewart

1) Stop using update panels they add an unnecessary level of complexity that creates more problems than is worth, especially when you have more than one in a page.

2) Stay away from mixing Ajax functionality with server-side logic. You will end up writing a lot of code to compensate one or the other.

What I suggest:

Don’t use update panels!
Keep the code that generates the initial page load. Instead of posting to the server with a .Net button, use a regular button and use the onClick=”foobar_ajax(id, ….Update UI)” to make an ajax call to update the data on the server. Include the ID of the item(the control) you are clicking on. When your ajax call is done you may not need to do anything or you could update the UI with some new data from the server (I recommend refreshing after saving).

Read: Calling the page method with jQuery instead. http://encosia.com/using-jquery-to-directly-call-aspnet-ajax-page-methods/