Tech Tips: Calling a function on your main page from an IFrame

Scott Zischerk — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:39:00 GMT

This one had me stumped for a while, turns out it was extremely simple and I just wanted to share. Here's the setup:

In the somepage.aspx I had a datalist with a SELECT command argument which updated an object on the server, then on the OnClientClick attribute I wanted to run a javascript function on the main page.

<asp:Imagebutton ID="iThumb" runat="server" OnClientClick="SomeFunctionOnParentPage();" CommandName="SELECT" CommandArgument='0' ImageUrl='ImageThumb.aspx' />

I was trying which way to go up the heirarchy tree to find my function. document.parent, document.parent.frameset, etc. It turns out I was thinking about it all wrong, I needed to think relative to the IFrame. I just needed to put parent in front of the function name.

OnClientClick="parent.SomeFunctionOnParentPage();"

I struggled with this one a bit, so I figured I'd post it to save someone else the same grief.

Scott Zischerk
Ann Arbor .Net Developers Member

Javascript

Tech Tips: Calling a function on your main page from an IFrame