hiding an element inside a listview

Question

I'm trying to hide an anchor inside my ListView by using visible='false' , but I have noticed that it is not working. I have also tried hiding the element using css but it's also not working. I have checked and there are no javascript errors or code behind errors.

This is what I did:

       //inside ItemTemplate in ListView
    <td>
    <a runat="server"  id="selectionAnchor" href='Somelocation' visible='<%# (Convert.ToBoolean(uoshowHiddenField.Value)) %>' >  Edit</a>
 </td>

I placed my uoShowHiddenField above the listview :

 <asp:HiddenField ID="uoShowHiddenField" runat="server" Value="false" /> 

but whenever I inspect the element in the browser it shows up like this:

<a href="Somelocation" id="selectionAnchor"> Edit</a>

I have also tried using this method to no avail:

style=' <%# (uoShowHiddenField.Value == "true") %> ? " ": "display:none;" %> '

Am I doing something wrong? It has taken alot of my time and I am really frustrated as to why it's not working.

Answer 1

Very rough rundown, but this is how you would do it. Remember to include the OnItemDataBound="" event binding to the ListView in the .aspx code:

Code behind:

As you are using a plain old HTML hyperlink, you will have to use the HtmlGenericControl class to target the control

protected void SampleListView_ItemDataBound(object sender, ListViewItemEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Item.ItemType == ListViewItemType.DataItem)
    {
       if(uoShowHiddenField.Value == "true") {
          HtmlGenericControl hyperlink = (HtmlGenericControl)e.item.FindControl("selectionAnchor");
          hyperlink.Visible = false;
       }
    }
}

ASPX:

<asp:ListView ID="SampleListView" OnItemDataBound="SampleListView_ItemDataBound" runat="server">
        <ItemTemplate>
            <a runat="server" ID="selectionAnchor">Link</a>
        </ItemTemplate>
    </asp:ListView>

I tend to go for ItemDataBound as it aids separation of concerns and reinforces the whole code behind / client code rule.