“AjaxControlToolkit is undefined”

By rickvdbosch

- 2 minutes read - 333 words

Because we were still using an old Visual Studio 2005 solution which included a Web Site project, it was time to upgrade. We upgraded our Visual Studio 2005 solution to Visual Studio 2010 (and .NET 4.0), converted the Web Site Project to a Web Application Project and then, of course, the AjaxControlToolkit had to follow. I downloaded the latest build from their Codeplex site and updated the references in the different projects. I ran the website, and that’s where things got ugly …

Most pages worked nicely, but there were a few that gave an “AjaxControlToolkit is undefined” error. I removed all references to the AjaxControlToolkit, removed all the old versions of it from my machine, referenced the most recent version again, all to no avail. After Googling * Binging the error I found a LOT of possible solutions. These included:

  • Use the ToolkitScriptManager from the AjaxControlToolkit in stead of the built-in ScriptManager
  • When using the ToolkitScriptManager, set CombineScripts to false
  • When using the ToolkitScriptManager, set EnablePartialRendering to true
  • Clear the browser cache
  • Clear the ASP.NET Temporary Files directory
  • Use a (dummy) control to make sure the JavaScript files have been loaded correctly

Unfortunately, none of these possible solutions helped us with our specific problem. Our problem occurred when we, for instance, set the PositioningMode for a control from custom JavaScript using the AjaxControlToolkit.PositioningMode enumeration. The error was always from custom JavaScript. After looking around a bit more I found one site that mentioned something about changing the AjaxControlToolkit ‘namespace’ in JavaScript. After playing around a bit I found out that changing the use of AjaxControlToolkit.XXX to System.Extended.UI.XXX provided the solution.

Hope this helps.

* Of course this is a weak attempt at a joke, but fact is that Google (the first 7 or so pages) only pointed me in the direction of the solutions that weren’t solutions for my situation. When I tried Bing for a change, I found something that put me on the right track pretty fast. Kudos to Bing!