I see that there is already some great advice and methods suggest for how to get the post back control. However I found another web page (Mahesh blog) with a method to retrieve post back control ID.
I will post it here with a little modification, including making it an extension class. Hopefully it is more useful in that way.
/// <summary>
/// Gets the ID of the post back control.
///
/// See: http://geekswithblogs.net/mahesh/archive/2006/06/27/83264.aspx
/// </summary>
/// <param name = "page">The page.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static string GetPostBackControlId(this Page page)
{
if (!page.IsPostBack)
return string.Empty;
Control control = null;
// first we will check the "__EVENTTARGET" because if post back made by the controls
// which used "_doPostBack" function also available in Request.Form collection.
string controlName = page.Request.Params["__EVENTTARGET"];
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(controlName))
{
control = page.FindControl(controlName);
}
else
{
// if __EVENTTARGET is null, the control is a button type and we need to
// iterate over the form collection to find it
// ReSharper disable TooWideLocalVariableScope
string controlId;
Control foundControl;
// ReSharper restore TooWideLocalVariableScope
foreach (string ctl in page.Request.Form)
{
// handle ImageButton they having an additional "quasi-property"
// in their Id which identifies mouse x and y coordinates
if (ctl.EndsWith(".x") || ctl.EndsWith(".y"))
{
controlId = ctl.Substring(0, ctl.Length - 2);
foundControl = page.FindControl(controlId);
}
else
{
foundControl = page.FindControl(ctl);
}
if (!(foundControl is IButtonControl)) continue;
control = foundControl;
break;
}
}
return control == null ? String.Empty : control.ID;
}
Update (2016-07-22): Type check for Button
and ImageButton
changed to look for IButtonControl
to allow postbacks from third party controls to be recognized.