Loading & Retrieving data from multiple user controls

Question

I have multiple user controls on the page that are used primarily for data entry purposes. When a product is loaded, I need to load the product data into all those user controls and retrieve data when I need to save the product. The user controls are not visible to the user directly, instead user would click on a link and the user control will open up in a modal popup.

Currently the way I'm doing this is, I've loaded all the user controls on the page in separate div controls, and showing the modal popup when the link is clicked. I'm sure loading all the user controls on the page is not a good idea. Is there a better way to handle this? I think we can show the markup using JSON with jQuery - but how can I load and retrieve the data using that? Can someone help please?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Sounds like a case for AJAX. You could use an UpdatePanel within the div that defines the modal dialog. From the click handler for whatever control brings up a particular modal, you can dynamically replace one usercontrol with another in that UpdatePanel, pre-populate the usercontrol's data, then show a single modal that could be anything. Doesn't have to be a modal either; you could set up the UI with tab-like controls that switch between these UserControls in an always-visible div.

Answer 2

For a simpler approach, you could keep your Usercontrols in a div that is initially hidden by JQuery.

On postback, ie. when the user clicks the button/link for a particular product you can populate all your controls in a standard ASP.Net way so they're ready to display and then call a bit of JS/JQuery to show the div as a modal dialog.