Hi all

This is a tough one for me. I have a page which uses a repeater to list a set of users who have requested to be friends with the currently logged in user. Beside each request, I have an asp:button with the id set to the unique username of each requestee. The page looks like this:

These people have requested to be your friend:

	George W. Bush
	21/04/2007 00:00:00	accept btn
	Hi, will you be my friend	decline btn

	Mr T
	04/10/2007 14:13:41	accept btn
	Add me as a friend, crazy foo'	decline btn

What I want to do with this is use the button onlclick event to UPDATE a column in my 'friends' table, like (AcceptedByFriend = 'True')

The problem that i am having is that, because my buttons (and their IDs) are created dynamically, I dont know how to refer to them using VB, can anyone help?

Thanks in advance!

Yep, i know exactly what you are talking about.. the right way is actually to hooke up onItemCommand to your repeater and then add a CommandName and CommandArgument to yoru buttons, for example

<asp:repeater id="Requested_Friends" onItemCommand="Accept_Decline_Friends" ......>

  <ItemTemplate>

             <asp:button id="Accept" commandName="Accept" commandArgument='<%#Eval("FriendID)"%>' runat="server" />
             <asp:button id="Decline" commandName="Decline" commandArgument='<%#Eval("FriendID)"%>' runat="server" />
  </ItemTemplate>

</asp:repeater>

and then in your

protected void Accept_Decline_Friends( blah)
{

          String friend_id = e.CommandArgument.ToString();

         if (e.CommandName == "Accept")
         {       // do your stuff

          }
          else if e.CommandName == "Decline") {
                  // do your stuff
         }

}

 

Nice one Liming

 Was a bit worried I hadn't got that across right but you seem to have nailed it. I'm working in VB and this is my first .Net project, so will give the solution a go and post if I have any more problems.

Thanks buddy

Hi

Back again quicker than I thought... converted to vb alright, but im never sure what is going on when declaring the subroutine. I have...

    Protected Sub Accept_Decline_Friends (???)
        Dim friend_id As String = e.CommandArgument.ToString
        If (e.CommandName = "Accept") Then
            ' do your stuff
        ElseIf (e.CommandName = "Decline") Then
            ' do your stuff
        End If
    End Sub

 Usually I let visual studio create these for me so my understanding is poor, it may not be as comlicated as i think, but can anyone help me out?

Hey Duke, are you asking about the parameter that goes into the "( )"? It's suppose to be

Protected Sub Accept_Decline_Friends(object sender, RepeaterCommandEventArgs e)

Normally, I never can remember what parameter to use either, so I just type in "Repeater" and then visual studio auto-suggest comes up with a list of names, and "RepeaterCommandEventArgs" is the one seems correct for thigns related to "Command".. tha'ts how I normally pick them.. and sure enough, it's correct because otherwise, the page won't compile nor load without telling you an error message

hope that helps.

Hi again

Think this is very close to working. I am now getting an error on the update and im not sure what the problem is. Here's the message:

Incorrect syntax near '('.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Incorrect syntax near '('.

Source Error:

Line 27:         acceptOrDeclineFriendship.UpdateParameters.Add("Response", answer)
Line 28:         acceptOrDeclineFriendship.UpdateParameters.Add("FriendID", friend_id)
Line 29:         acceptOrDeclineFriendship.Update()
Line 30: 
Line 31:     End Sub

The full code section is here (I am working in VB):

       'retrieve id of requestee and the answer accept/decline
        Dim friend_id As String = e.CommandArgument.ToString
        Dim answer As String = e.CommandName.ToString

        'add the parameters
        acceptOrDeclineFriendship.UpdateParameters.Add("Response", answer)
        acceptOrDeclineFriendship.UpdateParameters.Add("FriendID", friend_id)
        acceptOrDeclineFriendship.Update()

 By inserting a breakpoint before the update command, i can see that the values of 'answer' and 'friend_id' have been successfully retrieved. Here is the sqldatasource on page if this makes what im going a bit clearer:

    
    <!---- update query when user has accepted or declined the friendship ---->
    <asp:SqlDataSource ID="acceptOrDeclineFriendship" runat="server" ConnectionString="<%$ xxx %>"
        UpdateCommand="UPDATE Friends SET (ApprovedByFriend = @Response) WHERE (FriendID = @UserID) AND (UserID = @FriendID)">
        <UpdateParameters>
            <asp:ControlParameter Name="UserID" ControlID="userIdValue" />     (label control text is set to logged in user's id on page load)
        </UpdateParameters>
    </asp:SqlDataSource>

One thing that is complicating this is that im interchanging UserID and FriendID a lot, in hindsight i should have used 'Invitee' and 'Invited' or something. 
Here is how my Friends table works:

ID		PK integer
UserID (Invitee)          UniqueId                   	            	 	
FriendID (Invited)        UniqueId                              	
ApprovedByUser  	True/False/declined whatever
ApprovedByFriend  	True/False/declined whatever
Requested		Date/Time

If anyone knows what is going wrong here I am very grateful for any help at all. Thanks again