i have a repeater control that i am trying to use for rendering rows for a table.

<ajaxdata:repeater id="agentRepeater" runat="server" itemdataboundevent="onItemDataBound">
    <headertemplate>
        <table class="datatable">
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>Id</th>
                    <th>First Name</th>
                    <th>Last Name</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
    </headertemplate>
    <itemtemplate>
                <tr>
                    <td><span id="idSpan"></span></td>
                    <td><span id="firstNameSpan"></span></td>
                    <td><span id="lastNameSpan"></span></td>
                </tr>
    </itemtemplate>
    <footertemplate>
            </tbody>
        </table>
    </footertemplate>
</ajaxdata:repeater>

Logically, it seems very simple. The expected HTML output should be:

<div id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater" style="visibility: visible;">
<table class="datatable">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>Id</th>
            <th>First Name</th>
            <th>Last Name</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td><span id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater$3$0$idSpan">1</span></td>
            <td><span id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater$3$0$firstNameSpan">Matt</span></td>
            <td><span id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater$3$0$lastNameSpan">Lehnen</span></td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>
</div>

However, this is what I get:

<div id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater" style="visibility: visible;">
<table class="datatable">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Id</th>
<th>First Name</th>
<th>Last Name</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody> </tbody>
</table>
<span id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater$3$0$idSpan">1</span>
<span id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater$3$0$firstNameSpan">Matt</span>
<span id="ctl00_cph_agentRepeater$3$0$lastNameSpan">Lehnen</span>
</div>

The spans are rendered outside of the table and there is nothing within tbody. Am I doing something wrong?

 this is a known issue. Each template, header, item, or footer is treated as a stand alone entity, if the opening tag is not supplied with an ending tag, the rendering will automatically supply which would close the header table.

And as in the case of item template, since there is no table tag supplied, it is instead rendered outside of a table ...

thank you for the quick reply. this news is very unfortunate.