Walter,
Thanks for the link. That got me started, but this turned out to be way
more complicated than I expected. But I did get it resolved after relying on
numerous other code snippets found around the web.
Basic solution involved the following:
1) Javascript that references your ASP.NET controls when executing
clientside and puts it into your clipboard (only works with IE):
<script type="text/javascript">
function CopyToClipBoard()
{
if( window.clipboardData && clipboardData.setData )
{
clipboardData.setData("Text",
document.getElementById("tbMyTextBox").value);
alert("All " + document.getElementById("ddlRegion").value + " codes
have been copied to your local clipboard.");
}
else
{
alert("Internet Explorer required");
}
return false;
}
</script>
2) In PageLoad sub, adding:
btnCopyToClipBoard.Attributes.Add("onclick", "return
CopyToClipBoard();")
so that the Javascript function is called when the ASP button is clicked.
3) Adding some code to the sub that binds the GridView control to steal just
the column of data I need and hide it away for later use.
Since I only need to copy out a single column of data from the main
gridview, I made it easy on myself and created a hidden gridview based on the
same SQLDataSource that only contained the column to be put into the
Clipboard. The following code was then inserted to take the data out of the
gridview and put it into a multiline textbox control. The display of this
"copy" of the data from the column to be placed in the clipboard (if the
button is clicked) can not be hidden, or it will not render the control on
the page and the Javascript will then fail to find it, so I display it as a
very small little blip underneath my regular gridview. Basically, I
populated the textbox control using a manner such as:
'The following code block is in support of the Copy to ClipBoard
functionality
'The text box holding the values from the gridview needs to be
visible or else javascript
'will not be able to access it and use the control's value to
set clipboard
tbMyTextBox.Text = "" 'Empty it to start with
Dim i As Integer
'Cycle through the rows of the gridview, adding each value to
the textbox
For i = 0 To gvCopyToClipBoard.Rows.Count - 1
tbMyTextBox.Text = tbMyTextBox.Text +
ddlRegion.SelectedValue + gvCopyToClipBoard.Rows(i).Cells(0).Text +
Environment.NewLine
Next
Based on other postings I've read, it appears possible to actually get the
GridView data values while within the Javascript function by having it parse
the actual HTML table by the corresponding ID, but I was having trouble
getting it to do that so gave up and cheated by storing a copy of the data
possibly needed in a mostly hidden textbox control, whose value I had no
problem accessing in the script. Another advantage of storing all the column
values off in a corner is that if the gridview has paging turned on, and is
more than 1 page, the javascript would only have access to the data displayed
on that current page, and my users wanted all the values of this partilcular
column in their clipboard at once, and did not want to paste page by page.
The above snippets don't include my error handling and checking for
reasonable amounts of data, et al. And are just provided to save you some
time should you find yourself with a similar requirements.
As always, thank you all for your help and continued support.
"Walter Wang [MSFT]" said:
Hi JDRaven,
I'm not sure if I fully understood your question. Do you want to know how
to copy text to clipboard in JavaScript? or you need to know how to copy a
column of GridView?
For first question, this will depends on which browser, for IE, we can use
window.clipboardData.setData:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms535220.aspx
For second question, since we're not able to register your own clipboard
format in JavaScript (we can only use text or url format), therefore I
think you will have to "encode" and "decode" the gridview column to/from
text so that the other side could paste the data correctly.
Please let me know more about your detailed requirement so that I can
further follow-up. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Walter Wang (
[email protected], remove 'online.')
Microsoft Online Community Support
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