Hi,

I have this dropdownlist that breaks xhtml w3c validation because it generates a select tag with a javascript property. this only happens when autopostback is set to true.

so the the validation error that i get is this:

Error Line 263 column 86: there is no attribute "language".

...PostBack('dropArchive','')" language="javascript" id="dropArchive">

this is the code.

this control:

 <asp:dropdownlist id="dropArchive" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True"></asp:dropdownlist>

generates this html:

<select name="dropArchive" onchange="__doPostBack('dropArchive','')"
language="javascript" id="dropArchive">
        <option value="1">Episode 1</option>
        <option value="2">Episode 2</option>
        <option selected="selected" value="3">Episode 3</option>
</select> 

 
any idea on how can i stop the dropdownlist to generate the language="javascript" bit? 

 
would the dropdown work without it? (I guess so?)

 
Thanks! 

have you tried doing something like

droparchive.attributes.remove("language","javascript")

in the page_load or page_init event in your codebehind? 

If you take off the autopostback='true' then ASP.Net won't add the onchange='..' to the dropdown but it also won't postback when you change the value so you'd then have to add the javascript your self to do the postback, which seems a little odd just to pass xhtml validation.

 

thanks, that was a good idea.

I tried that, but it only accepts 1 attribute, so I tried:

dropArchive.Attributes.Remove("javascript");
dropArchive.Attributes.Remove("language");
dropArchive.Attributes.Remove("language=\"javascript\"");

 
and even

dropArchive.Attributes.Clear();

 

but it didn't do anything.

 
any other ideas?
 

I remember fighting this back in the day. We ended up creating a class that inherited from System.Web.UI.Page, then override the Render Method. Then had our aspx pages inherit from this class

I don't have the original source for this, but I reflected and here is what was in there

protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter output)
{
      StringWriter writer1 = new StringWriter();
      HtmlTextWriter writer2 = new HtmlTextWriter(writer1);
      base.Render(writer2);
      writer2.Close();
      this.xHtml = writer1.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
      this.xHtml = this.xHtml.Replace("<script language=\"javascript\">", "<script type=\"text/javascript\">");
      this.xHtml = this.xHtml.Replace("<script language=\"javascript\" type=\"text/javascript\">", "<script type=\"text/javascript\">");
      this.xHtml = this.xHtml.Replace("language=\"javascript\"", string.Empty);
      output.Write(this.xHtml);
}

cool thanks!

so how does it work?

I need to paste this method in my page and then call it from pageload?

also, it also looks like the method is specting  HtmlTextWriter ?

You create a new class, call it XHtmlPage for example You set it up like

public class XHtmlPage : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    // Paste the Render function above in here... public override void Render
    // You can rename the variables as you wish - Reflector gives them generic names as you see above
}

That's it. You will have to add some namespaces to the top of this class or qualify the StringWriter and HtmlTextWriter with their appropriate namespaces

I also noticed that in the function above, xHtml was declared as a private variable so you can either do that as well or add string xHtml = string.Empty at the top of the Render method

Then when you setup a Page like Default.aspx, when you view the codebehind you see the class has

_Default : System.Web.UI.Page

You change it to

_Default : XHtmlPage

And of course if the class you created has a different namespace, then you will have to bring that it as well with a using statement at the top or qualifying it. Does this make sense?

To answer your question... you do not have to pass it an HtmlTextWriter. .NET does that internally.

Thanks man, that worked perfectly!

now let's hope valencia beats inter next week in the champions league!
 

Glad it worked for you. Don't forget to mark the post that answered your question.

Valencia is my second favorite team! I hope they embarrass Inter