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Update: I’m not sure what was going on in my head the day I wrote this article, but as Lukas points out in a comment below you can simply use e.Item.FindControl(“cblRoles”) as apposed to the convoluted way I’m doing it

I’ve been playing around with the ListView control recently and am quite impressed with it.  I like how it gives full control over the markup used as apposed to the other data driven controls.

I came across an issue where in my ItemTemplate I have a CheckBoxList which I needed to reference when I hit a button also in the ItemTemplate.

As the ItemTemplate repeats there will be many CheckBoxLists so how do I find the correct one?

The answer I found was in the ListView’s Items collection. On my button I set the CommandArgument to the DataItemIndex, then in my handler for the ListView’s ItemCommand event I used FindControl on the item matching the index.

Here is my item template:

<ItemTemplate>
<div>
<asp:Literal ID="lblForename" Text='<%# Eval("Forename") %>' runat="server" />
<asp:Literal ID="lblSurname" Text='<%# Eval("Surname") %>' runat="server" />
�
<div>
<asp:CheckBoxList   ID="cblRoles"
DataSourceID="odsRole"
DataValueField="ID"
DataTextField="Name"
OnDataBound="cblRoles_OnDataBound"
runat="server">
</asp:CheckBoxList>
</div>
�
<div>
<asp:Button ID="btnSaveRoles"
Text="Save Roles"
CommandName="SaveRoles"
CommandArgument='<%# Container.DataItemIndex %>'
runat="server" />
</div>
</div>
</ItemTemplate>

And here is my event handler:

protected void lvUser_ItemCommand(object sender, ListViewCommandEventArgs e)
{
try
{
if (e.CommandName.Equals("SaveRoles"))
{
CheckBoxList cblRoles = lvUser.Items[Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument)].FindControl("cblRoles") as CheckBoxList;

//Other code
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
lblMessage.Text = ex.Message;
}
}

So I’m using the FindControl method on the ListViewDataItem in the position passed via the CommandArgument which gives me the correct control.