In Webapps I often ran into the problem that users clicked a submit button more then once. This was because the user did not get immediately feedback like he does in fat-client applications. To reduce these situations I was looking for some code to disable a ASP.Net button right after the user clicked on it. I found some snippets on the web built a little helper-class to reuse this code and simplify its usage.

To disable a button instantly after a user clicked it JScript on the client (browser) is needed as every server-side code needs a roundtrip to the server in one or another way what will result in above delays we don't want anymore.

To add this client-side JScript code to a ASP.Net webcontrol button I wrote the following helper class. Usage of this class is really simple: just call

Usage example:

ButtonHelper.SetSingleClickButton(mypage, mybutton);

ButtonHelper.cs:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
 
namespace iDev.Web
{
  /// 

  /// Helperclass for ASP.net buttons.
  /// 
  public class ButtonHelper
  {
    public ButtonHelper()
    {}
 
    ///

    ///Add client-side JScript to disable button after it was clicked.
    ///
    public static void SetSingleClickButton(Page page, Button button)
    {
      // Check pre-conditions
      if (page == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("page");
      if (button == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("button");
 
      button.Attributes.Add("onclick","javascript:" + 
            button.ClientID + ".disabled=true;" + 
            page.GetPostBackEventReference(button));
    }
  }
}

This class can be further improved by determinating the Page automatically where possible or by convert its method to extension method for buttons.