If this is too hypothetical and needs to be somewhere else, please let me know.
I have a project that needs specific gridviews to appear on multiple pages. Instead of copying and pasting the gridviews on each of the pages I thought creating a user control for each specific gridview or create a page for each gridview and then use iframes would be my best options.
I have not used either extensively so I am looking to the SO community's experience, are there known problems with using user controls and/or iframes when it comes to:
validation
communication between user control/iframe and parent page
ajax/updatepanels containing user control/iframe
thanks in advance
Since a gridview is essentially a user control (that's very flexible), I would first explore doing this with neither of your options. If possible, use the standard gridview and let your data layer do most the work. However, assuming you already know that... but your requirements require one or the other of your options, here are things to consider.
An iframe is easy to implement but unless your need is really simplistic in terms of user interaction, the user control will be the most flexible. Another downside to an iframe is it's size (you're essentially loading two pages). The downside of user controls are the upfront time in building them.
Based on your criterion:
1. validation - can do with either option but you'll have more flexibility with a user control
2. communication between user control/iframe and parent page - much easier with user control unless query string parms will do the trick
3. ajax/updatepanels containing user control/iframe - again user control
Related
I am putting together a winforms project and I was thinking of using user controls with one form. For example, having a user control for customer lists, customer detail, product list, product detail, etc.
If this is a good idea, if the user is moving from one screen to another do you just make the user control visible = false or do you null it out?
It seems like you are grouping like functionality so I do not think you have to many. Some of the projects that I have done have had pages with a large amount of resources I converted those to usercontrols and I create each time I show them, otherwise if they are relativly lightweight changing their visibility will work fine. It all boils down to what you are trying to accomplish.
I have an existing web application built using ASP.NET 4.0 and C#. The application has an Administration page, that contains many different sections in which you can change different settings. I've attached screenshots for clarity.
Currently everything is contained to one page. Which means I have a massive amount of controls on just one page. I would like to have a navigation panel where you could select the "section" you want and it would load a central content area with that "section". I'm wondering what would be the best way to do this. Would it be best to make each section it's own control, or would I separate each section into a separate page?
I want to make sure I go about it the right way so that it will be easy to maintain and scale.
I appreciate any help.
I would definitely recommend using controls for each piece. The nice thing about controls is that if you ever need to use them in a completely different part of your application you are good to go!
As for loading in separate controls you can simply use query string variables. For instance let's say you have an anchor tag like this:
Business Hours
Now we can build a single page: /admin/index.aspx and on the page load we can check the query string. Now depending on that query string we can then load the appropriate control.
Reading from a query string: http://triaslama.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/retrieving-query-string-values-in-aspnet-and-javascript/
Loading User control via code behind: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1939/Programatically-include-an-ASP-NET-UserControl-in
I have created certain functionalities for an application. These functionalities include -
ADD USER
EDIT USER
DELETE USER and so on
Now I have written all these in seperate pages. So when I have to delete a user I go to USER_DELETE.aspx page to do that.
My new requirement is that there should be a single page from which all these can be done. Being more specific, I want that there should be separate panels in a page called "USER_MANAGER". Each panel will have the required functionality.
Is there a way I can do this by just creating the new UI of the USER_MANAGER page and calling the other pages (as User Controls or any other easier way) into the UI of USER_MANAGER?
I don't want to do any changes to the existing pages for various functions. I hope the question is clear, I am a bit novice in this technology so I am not really sure.
Thanks and regards
It sounds like you want to turn your pages in to ASP.NET User Controls. User Controls are just as easy to create as pages and can be used in similar fashion as Server Controls. If you want to create controls that can be shared between projects, then you want to write Server Controls but thos cases are probably not so common.
There are many ways to tackle this problem. If you are listing the users in a gridview you could use inline editing and do it within there.
You could retain the pages you wrote and use a modal popup or iframe. Another way would be with a multiview or tabs or panels.
I would design the UI and the then decide what the best solution for your application is then write these elements.
We have an application where we have a single level navigation menu with some heavy-duty pages on each link. The user can switch back and forth between these pages frequently to obtain information that he needs.
Once the page gets generated, it wouldn't change for the session. However, the page is specific to the user, hence we cant cache it.
I was trying to come up with a solution where we generate the page once, and keep it hidden in the background until its link is clicked, but haven't been able to get my head around this.
One of the ways I thought was to have multiple div tags (one for each page) on one page and keep toggling the visibility as the links are pressed, but that would end up making this single page very heavy. Someone also suggested using iFrames, but I am not really comfortable using the iFrames much and I'm not even sure, if it would be any helpful either.
Can you guys please suggest a few approaches to tackle the issue?
update: Just to clarify, we are fine with keeping the pages separate and navigate across using a standard menu bar. We were just looking for ways to optimize the performance as we know that the pages once generated wouldn't change and there should be some way to tap that benefit.
You can use Ajax tab control for this purpose
Try taking a look at this MSDN article which specifically tackles the issue of how to user-level cache. Also, it might be more manageable to break each tab into a user control. That way your ASP.NET page has just the tab control and 1 user control for each section under the tab. It makes managing tabs much easier.
EDIT:
What I would do in your case, since you say the data won't change for the user, is I would grab the static data from the database and then I would store that data in the Session cache. THe session cache is specific per user and you can try to retrieve the static data from there instead of repetitively calling the database.
Check out the ASP Multiview control. Just remember that even though the different views are hidden when not active, their viewstate is still being sent back and forth. Can be a benefit if you need to check control values across views though.
I am struggling with finding clear answers to dynamically creating the same page over and over. The questions and samples I have found seem to be all over the board on this topic. I have studied the life cycle and still seem to not have a clear answer as to where code should go.
I have a master page and a content page. All the content in the content area needs to be dynamically created (text boxes, ddl's, page tabs, buttons/onclick etc.).
After a user fills in data and clicks a submit button, I need to read the values off the form and rebuild the page completely again (not add/remove controls to current content).
My question is then.
Where do I put my code to build the page?
Will this area allow me to use IsPostBack so I can rebuild content with Request.Form values?
Will my buttons _Click events work?
Are there any working samples out there you could direct me to?
Thank you very much for the feedback...
I don't know all the answers to your questions, but I hope this may get you started. When dynamically generating the UI through code, this happens in Init. Controls dynamically loaded on Init is key because between init and load, on postback, viewstate is loaded for these controls.
This means you need, on every postback, recreate the page as is to match the previous control tree, then deconstruct it after init and recreate the new UI, if something is supposed to change UI wise. This is because it validates the tree structure to determine its the same UI. Now, if you don't need viewstate, this may not be as much of an issue. I haven't verified this without viewstate to see if it behaves different.
It depends how dynamic you need it, whether you need viewstate (is a big factor).
HTH.
Try creating the controls in the page's PreInit method. "IsPostBack" should work and the click event handlers should work as well.
What you need is a web user control, see ASP.NET User Controls
Brian's advices are good and you should follow them.
This might not really answer your question but still I add it as an advice. I'm professionally creating ASP.net web applications at quite a large scale and from my experience I can say that too much "dynamics" is usually bad and should be avoided because it just introduces complexity. Normally you might want to expose UI parts into ASP.net UserControls or if you want to make them even more reusable (if that's a factor) then into ASP.net Server controls. Then you replace different of them dynamically rather than creating everything from scratch.