LinkButton does not fire postback

Question

I have a linkbutton that somehow does not give a postback when clicked. Here is the code

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function () {
        $('#divTabs').tabs({
            show: function () {
                var sel = $('#divTabs').tabs('option', 'selected');
                $('#<%= hfLastTab.ClientID %>').val(sel);
            },
            selected: '<%= hfLastTab.Value %>'
        });
    });
</script>

<div id="divTabs">
    <ul>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar1" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink1" runat="server" OnClick="TabLink1_Click" >&nbsp;Link1&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar2" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink2" runat="server" OnClick="TabLink2_Click">&nbsp;Link2&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar3" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink3" runat="server" OnClick="TabLink3_Click">&nbsp;Link3&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
    </ul>
    ....
</div>

And the code behind:

protected void TabLink1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    SelectTopBar();
    SetSelectTab("TabBar1");
}

protected void TabLink2_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    SelectTopBar();
    SetSelectTab("TabBar2");
}

protected void TabLink3_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    SelectTopBar();
    SetSelectTab("TabBar3");
}

I tried putting the breakpoint in the codebehind and it does not hit. The page is not refreshed as well. If I use <asp:Button>, then it will do the submit and everything seems to be fine. I also tried to see whether there are more than one <form> tags, but there is not. I also make sure that in the aspx page, those click event are tied.

[EDIT]: The link button is located inside a jquery tab. So instead of using the ordinary <a href... as in the jquery example which does not do any postback, I used asp linkbutton and want the postback.

Any idea?

Answer 1

Found some workaround. I defined another linkbutton outside the <div id="divTabs">, and the linkbutton inside <div id="divTabs"> will call the outer linkbutton. So the code becomes like

<asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton1" runat="server" OnClick="TabLink1_Click" ></asp:LinkButton>
<asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton2" runat="server" OnClick="TabLink2_Click" ></asp:LinkButton>
<asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton3" runat="server" OnClick="TabLink3_Click" ></asp:LinkButton>

<div id="divTabs">
    <ul>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar1" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink1" runat="server">&nbsp;Link1&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar2" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink2" runat="server">&nbsp;Link2&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar3" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink3" runat="server">&nbsp;Link3&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
    </ul>
    ....
</div>

In the code behind, inside the Page_Load function

TabLink1.OnClientClick = "document.getElementById('" + LinkButton1.ClientID + "').click();";
TabLink2.OnClientClick = "document.getElementById('" + LinkButton2.ClientID + "').click();";
TabLink3.OnClientClick = "document.getElementById('" + LinkButton3.ClientID + "').click();";

I'm guessing the jQuery library might have some impact such that the link does not call a postback, so I'm using the workaround above.

Answer 2

In case anyone else is looking. I had the same problem with the LinkButton OnClick event not firing, and fixed it by simply using "OnCommand=" instead of "OnClick=".

Answer 3

Have you tried including a responseredirect as the last line of each event like in the below example?

  protected void TabLink1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
   SelectTopBar();
   SetSelectTab("TabBar1");
   Response.Redirect(Request.Url.AbsoluteUri);


}

Answer 4

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function () {
        $('#divTabs').tabs({
            show: function () {
                var sel = $('#divTabs').tabs('option', 'selected');
                $('#<%= hfLastTab.ClientID %>').val(sel);
            },
            selected: '<%= hfLastTab.Value %>'
        });
    });
</script>

<div id="divTabs">
    <ul>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar1" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink1" CauseValidation="false" runat="server" OnClick="TabLink1_Click" >&nbsp;Link1&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar2" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink2" runat="server" CauseValidation="false" OnClick="TabLink2_Click">&nbsp;Link2&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
        <li runat="server" id="TabBar3" ><asp:LinkButton ID="TabLink3" runat="server" CauseValidation="false" OnClick="TabLink3_Click">&nbsp;Link3&nbsp;</asp:LinkButton></li>
    </ul>
    ....
</div>

Use CausesValidation="false"

Answer 5

In case anyone's looking for a solution that actually works, it's because you're fiddling with javascript somehow and that's overriding the .NET postback behaviour.

In my case it was simply using Bootstrap and adding the data-toggle="buttons" e.markup to the button group like:

<div class="btn-group btn-group-sm btn-group-justified" data-toggle="buttons">

That was recognized by Bootstrap JavaScript because it needs to watch these buttons in the group to be able to display their toggle status correctly (i.e. adding/removing the "active" class to/from children).

Solution: removed that data-toggle and implemented the toggle status highlighting with some C# inline code.

Answer 6

Maybe it is .NET framework's fault, for me __doPostBack did not work in all pages because I compiled my project with a newer version of Visual studio. I changed "Target framework" from ".NET framework 4.0" to ".NET framework 3.0", and after that rebuild project and it has worked.