Adding a Confirmation to a Command Button

I'm coming from a Classic ASP background, so I'm used to just using JavaScript to control the client side functionality of command buttons, so when it came time to take control of the Cancel button created by an ASP.NET DetailsView I was stumped. There's probably a better way to do it, but this worked for me.

The command buttons are created in the last row of the DetailsView during the ItemCreated event, so first check if the footer row has been created:

The command bar that contains your action buttons it the last element in the Rows collection. Once you have the command bar you can loop through all of its controls and find the one your looking for. I was looking for the Cancel button:

I wanted to add a confirmation to the Cancel the action, but you could use this example to add functionality to any of the command buttons. The confirmation button is created by adding a client side script to the OnClientClick property:

btn.OnClientClick = "if(!confirm('Do you really want to discard the changes?')){return false;}"

Putting it together:

Protected Sub DetailsView1_ItemCreated(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs) Handles DetailsView1.ItemCreated

' Check that footerRow has been created
If Not (DetailsView1.FooterRow Is Nothing) Then
' Find Command Bar
Dim commandRowIndex As Integer = DetailsView1.Rows.Count - 1
Dim commandRow As DetailsViewRow = DetailsView1.Rows(commandRowIndex)
Dim cell As DataControlFieldCell = CType(commandRow.Controls(0), DataControlFieldCell)
' Loop through controls to find Cancel button
For Each ctl As Control In cell.Controls
  If TypeOf ctl Is Button Then
  Dim btn As Button = CType(ctl, Button)
    If btn.CommandName = "Cancel" Then
     btn.ToolTip = "Click here to cancel"
     btn.CommandName = "Cancel"
     btn.OnClientClick = "if(!confirm('Do you really want to discard the changes?')){return false;}"
    End If
  End If
Next
End If
End Sub

Redirecting User on Command Click

The next thing I wanted to do was redirect the user to a different page if they confirmed the cancel action. First I created a sub called "Get_Command" and then I called it from the OnItemCommand of the DetailsView.

Here's an example: