ASP.NET Page Life Cycle Overview

Page Event	Typical Use
PreInit	Use this event for the following: · Check the IsPostBack property to determine whether this is the first time the page is being processed. · Create or re-create dynamic controls. · Set a master page dynamically. · Set the Theme property dynamically. · Read or set profile property values. Note: If the request is a postback, the values of the controls have not yet been restored from view state. If you set a control property at this stage, its value might be overwritten in the next event.
Init	Raised after all controls have been initialized and any skin settings have been applied. Use this event to read or initialize control properties.
InitComplete	Raised by the Page object. Use this event for processing tasks that require all initialization be complete.
PreLoad	Use this event if you need to perform processing on your page or control before the Load event. Before the Page instance raises this event, it loads view state for itself and all controls, and then processes any postback data included with the Request instance.
Load	The Page calls the OnLoad event method on the Page, then recursively does the same for each child control, which does the same for each of its child controls until the page and all controls are loaded. Use the OnLoad event method to set properties in controls and establish database connections.
Control events	Use these events to handle specific control events, such as a Button control's Click event or aTextBox control's TextChanged event. Note: In a postback request, if the page contains validator controls, check the IsValid property of the Page and of individual validation controls before performing any processing.
LoadComplete	Use this event for tasks that require that all other controls on the page be loaded.
PreRender	Before this event occurs: · The Page object calls EnsureChildControls for each control and for the page. · Each data bound control whose DataSourceID property is set calls its DataBind method. For more information, see Data Binding Events for Data-Bound Controls later in this topic. The PreRender event occurs for each control on the page. Use the event to make final changes to the contents of the page or its controls.
SaveStateComplete	Before this event occurs, ViewState has been saved for the page and for all controls. Any changes to the page or controls at this point will be ignored. Use this event perform tasks that require view state to be saved, but that do not make any changes to controls.
Render	This is not an event; instead, at this stage of processing, the Page object calls this method on each control. All ASP.NET Web server controls have a Render method that writes out the control's markup that is sent to the browser. If you create a custom control, you typically override this method to output the control's markup. However, if your custom control incorporates only standard ASP.NET Web server controls and no custom markup, you do not need to override the Render method. A user control (an .ascx file) automatically incorporates rendering, so you do not need to explicitly render the control in code.
Unload	This event occurs for each control and then for the page. In controls, use this event to do final cleanup for specific controls, such as closing control-specific database connections. For the page itself, use this event to do final cleanup work, such as closing open files and database connections, or finishing up logging or other request-specific tasks. Note: During the unload stage, the page and its controls have been rendered, so you cannot make further changes to the response stream. If you attempt to call a method such as the Response.Writemethod, the page will throw an exception.