How to change client ID of client side control

The clientid is automatically set for you.

What's the reason for wanting to change it, i might be able to come up with an alternative idea.

hi there, thanks for your replies.

@gocemi
thats a cool example. since my problem is dynamic and recursive; i can't use yours. (Ill reserve a few points for that one).

@discon0
I tried to change the ID using control.ID = "newID", but it didn't change on the output. I suspect this has to do with being in a repeater control. i did a test outside the control and the solution works. Just not from within a repeater for some reason.  I couldn't find any properties on the repeater to help.

Do you have any ideas?

You can create a list( hash map) that will contain controls whom id's needs to be changed, if controls are created dynamically.

key, value should be [id of the control], [new id to be changed]

And in here you can do it li like this.
HasMap hm = new HashMap();
... fill in the hm
...
public override string ClientID
{
get
{
if(hm.Contains[this.ID])
return hm[this.Id]
else
return this.clientid
}


I havent tried this but since client ids are assigned in the Render method i'm sure you'll have that list already.

If the controls are runat="server" and in a repeater you can use this:

      protected void rep_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
      {
            TextBox tb = e.Item.FindControl("txtTest") as TextBox;
            if (tb != null)
            {
                  tb.ID = "myNewId";
            }
      }

However, the resulting IDs will change from:
"rep_ctl00_txtTest" to "rep_ctl00_myNewId"

The "rep_ctl00_" prefix will still be there. This is being done on all controls contained within a control that has the INamingContainer interface to avoid duplicate ids across multiple controls a page might have.

Would you consider an alternative approach? If all you want is to set the IDs to something you control so you can use them from client-side javascript you could try this:

      protected void rep_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
      {
            TextBox tb = e.Item.FindControl("txtTest") as TextBox;
            if (tb != null)
            {
                  ClientScript.RegisterArrayDeclaration("textBoxes", "'" + tb.ClientID + "'");
            }
      }

this will register a client-side javascript array named "textBoxes" with all of the client Ids:

>>> textBoxes
["rep_ctl00_txtTest", "rep_ctl01_txtTest", "rep_ctl02_txtTest", "rep_ctl03_txtTest", "rep_ctl04_txtTest", "rep_ctl05_txtTest", "rep_ctl06_txtTest", "rep_ctl07_txtTest", "rep_ctl08_txtTest", "rep_ctl09_txtTest"]