AspNet2Holes

There appears to be no solution to this issue provided by the Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 framework. The ASP.NET 2.0 MSDN article, "ValidationSummary.EnableClientScript Property," may offer a clue. It says, "When this property is set to false...the ShowMessageBox property has no effect."

The obvious workaround is to insert JScript in the page. In an event handler function, first check whether the page is valid. If not, then client-side validation succeeded, but server-side validation failed.

If server-side validation failed, enumerate the validation controls and build JScript that will display the error messages from all the ones that failed. Put this into the page body, and perform no further actions. You will then get the popup message box that the ValidationSummary should have produced. (In the following, <= appears instead of < because of restrictions at this site.)

if (!IsValid) // server-side validation failed
{
StringBuilder oErrorScript = new StringBuilder();
string sScript1 = @"<=script type=""text/javascript"" language=""JavaScript"">";
string sScript2a = @" alert('";
string sScript2b = @"')";
string sScript3 = @"<=/script>";
oErrorScript.AppendLine(sScript1);
oErrorScript.Append(sScript2a);
ValidatorCollection oValidatorCollection = Validators;
foreach (BaseValidator oValidator in oValidatorCollection)
{
if (!oValidator.IsValid)
{
string sErrorMessage = oValidator.ErrorMessage + @"\n";
oErrorScript.Append(sErrorMessage);
}
}
oErrorScript.AppendLine(sScript2b);
oErrorScript.AppendLine(sScript3);
RegisterStartupScript("AlertMessage", oErrorScript.ToString());
return;
}