asked on

Check if a dynamically created div already exists

Hello experts,

I'm creating a .NET web app that dynamically creates several <div>s and sets their contents from VB code behind.

The id and the innerHTML of each <div> is assigned as .NET cycles through a SQL datareader. Sometimes the datareader will return results I would like to append to a <div> that have already been created.

The code below will create all the <div>s but doesn't append text to the existing ones. I can't figure out where I'm going wrong.

so far I have this:

While ObjDR.Read
intCountyID = publicfunctions.ConvertdbnullsInt(ObjDR("CountyID"))
Dim myDiv As HtmlGenericControl = FindControl("div" & intCountyID)

If IsNothing(myDiv) Then 'create a new div
Dim newDiv As New System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl("DIV")
newDiv.ID = "div" & intCountyID
'Build the HTML as a string
strDivHTML = ""
strDivHTML = "publicfunctions.Convertdbnulls(ObjDR("County")) "
strDivHTML &= "some data"
'Set the inner HTML
newDiv.InnerHtml = strDivHTML
'Add it to the page
CountyDetails.Controls.Add(newDiv)
'Set attributes
newDiv.Attributes.Add("class", "CountyDetail radius")
newDiv.Attributes.Add("runat", "server")

Else 'Append to the existing div
strDivHTML = myDiv.InnerHtml
strDivHTML &= "<br />Extra stuff"
myDiv.InnerHtml = strDivHTML
End If
End While

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Robert Schutt

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SOLUTION

Roopesh Reddy

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SOLUTION

jorge_toriz

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Paulconsulting

ASKER

Thanks guys!
I worked around the issue by getting my data ordered by the controls I was creating and then checking if the "id" was the same as the last run through the data reader before I closed out the <div> and added it to the page.

I'm hoping that robert_schutt's answer:
Dim myDiv As HtmlGenericControl = CountyDetails.FindControl("div" & intCountyID)
is the best one. Although I'm not going to go back and redo it to confirm. ;)

I'll be doing another similar project soon so I hope I can use this instead of my messy (but functional) work around!

Thanks!