How to access controls in listview's layouttemplate?

Question

How do I set a property of a user control in ListView's LayoutTemplate from the code-behind?

<asp:ListView ...>
<LayoutTemplate>
<myprefix:MyControl id="myControl" ... />
</LayoutTemplate>
...
</asp:ListView>

I want to do this:

myControl.SomeProperty = somevalue;

Please notice that my control is not in ItemTemplate, it is in LayoutTemplate, so it does not exist for all items, it exists only once. So I should be able to access it once, not for every data bound item.

Answer 1

var control = (MyControl)myListView.FindControl("myControlId");

This will work but make sure you do it after the data bind or the LayoutTemplate will not have been created thus throwing an error.

Answer 2

To set a property of a control that is inside the LayoutTemplate, simply use the FindControl method on the ListView control.

var control = (MyControl)myListView.FindControl("myControlId");

Answer 3

This has been answered in this Stack Overflow question:
Access a control inside a the LayoutTemplate of a ListView

See the comment on the accepted answer by tanathos.

I know this was asked over a year ago, but it's one of the first results for the search term I used to get here, so I wanted to leave the answer for anyone else who stumbled upon it.

Answer 4

Use the FindControl method on each ListViewItem.

var control = (MyControl)Item.FindControl("yourControlId");

Answer 5

The layout gets created, and fires a LayoutCreated event that says the layout has been created in the system.

Then, you can use listview.FindControl to get a reference to that control.

Answer 6

In case you need the VB.net version, here it is:

Dim control = CType(myListView.FindControl("myControlId"), MyControl)