ASP.NET

Reduce Repetitive Code with ASP.NET Custom Controls

In this article Rich explores the world of ASP.NET Custom Controls and how they can dramatically simplify development of ASP.NET web applications.

Author Info:

By: Rich Sbarro

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January 08, 2003

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Reduce Repetitive Code with ASP.NET Custom Controls - Implementing in an ASP.NET page
(Page 5 of 6 )

Implementing your custom control in an ASP.NET page is a fairly simple matter. In fact, the code below shows how to do just that.

<%@ Page language="c#" Codebehind="ContactsDropDown.aspx.cs" AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="WebControls.ContactsDropDown" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="Web" Namespace="WebControls" Assembly="WebControls" %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Reduce Repetitive Code with Custom Controls</title>
<style>
.text-default
{
font-family: Tahoma, 'Times New Roman';
font-size: 12px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<form id="ContactsDropDown" method="post" runat="server">
<span class="text-default">
<h2>Contact Information</h2>
Contacts:
<br><br>
<asp:Literal ID="litContact" EnableViewState="False" Runat="server" />
</span>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The two lines that do all the work are basically the <%@ Register %>tag that references the assembly that contains the control, and the <Web:ContactsDropDownList /> tag that tells ASP.NET to render the control you just created (remember that the prefix defined in the Register tag must match the prefix used to declare your control!).

And of course, since the ContactsDropDownList handles its own databinding, there is no need to worry about obtaining the Contacts data in the code behind page.

Next: Conclusion >>