how to remove 'name' attribute from server controls?

Question

The following asp.net side code of control:

<asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="LimitTextBox" Text="20" ClientIDMode="Static" />

Generates such HTML-code:

<input name="ctl11$ctl00$ctl02$TeamPlayerSelector$LimitTextBox" 
    type="text" value="20" id="LimitTextBox">

ID attribute - as is required, but how can I remove 'name' attribute? It is not required for me and is also too long to transfer it to user browser.

How can I prevent 'name' attribute generation? Thanks

P.S. I work under ASP.NET 4.0

Answer 1

create a Filter (class that inherits from Stream), assign it to your HttpContext.Response.Filter attribute, and in it you would overwrite the Write method, to remove all the name-tags from the generated html :)

See this page for more information http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.httpresponse.filter.aspx

Update

Looking at the sourcecode for TextBox it reveals that Name is actually added to the Attributes-list during render, so it should be possible to interfere with the rendering of the TextBox class and prevent this attribute from being added. This should do

public class NoNamesTextBox : TextBox
{
    private class NoNamesHtmlTextWriter : HtmlTextWriter
    {
        public NoNamesHtmlTextWriter(TextWriter writer) : base(writer) {}

        public override void WriteAttribute(string name, string value, bool fEncode)
        {
            if (name.Equals("name", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) return;

            base.WriteAttribute(name, value, fEncode);
        }
    }

    protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {
        var noNamesWriter = new NoNamesHtmlTextWriter(writer);

        base.Render(noNamesWriter);
    }
}

Update once more

How could i forget! You don't even need to subclass your textbox. In asp.net you can define which HtmlTextWriter type you want to use per control, so you can just configure that every TextBox control should use an instance of your own NoNamesHtmlTextWriter like this

<browsers>
  <browser refID="Default">
    <controlAdapters>
      <adapter 
        controlType="System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox"
        adapterType="NoNamesTextBoxAdapter" 
      />
    </controlAdapters>
  </browser>
</browsers>

public class NoNamesTextBoxAdapter : ControlAdapter
{
    private class NoNamesHtmlTextWriter : HtmlTextWriter
    {
        public NoNamesHtmlTextWriter(TextWriter writer) : base(writer) { }

        public override void WriteAttribute(string name, string value, bool fEncode)
        {
            if (name.Equals("name", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) return;

            base.WriteAttribute(name, value, fEncode);
        }
    }

    protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {
        var noNamesRender = new HtmlTextWriter(writer);
        base.Render(noNamesRender);
    }
}