Populating Controls - Form Load Dynamically

[netasp]

hi all,
how can I populate one aspx form when page is loading based on page ID? for
example:
loading page A (to search for VB code) would display labels and texboxes,
dropdown lists all related to VB, plus the address bar would show something
like this: www.somethinghere?id=3

and if you change number 3 from the address bar to (for example) 34 or 71
you would get different page with the same formatting like I.e:
www.somethinghere?id=34 would load the page related to C# topics and all
labels and texboxes and dropdown lists related to C# OR
www.somethinghere?id=71 would load the page related to ASP.NET for example
and labels and textboxes would be populated according to ASP.NET and so
on...

my question is, how do they do that? they must assign an ID number for each
topic but then how they populate all controls on that ONE page accordingly?

I am very much interested in this approach and wants to know how its done
and how can I get more info about it. I think its better than duplicating
pages if you were going to use them over and over?

what do you think?

please let me know

thanks

 

[netasp]

thanks Eliyahu for your reply,

does this method considered to be a good or bad practice with visual studio
2005? because I also have seen some other web applications using different
pages for each category page, their address bar would show aspx pages I.e
employee.aspx, manager.aspx, supervisor.aspx instead of loading everything
into one template page.

I just want to know what is the best practice and recommendation for such a
scenario?

thanks again

id=XX part of the url is available as Request.QueryString.
Request.QueryString["id"] for www.somethinghere?id=71 will return "71".
PageLoad event code can read the id and setup the page controls
accordingly.

--
Eliyahu Goldin,
Software Developer & Consultant
Microsoft MVP [ASP.NET]

hi all,
how can I populate one aspx form when page is loading based on page ID?
for example:
loading page A (to search for VB code) would display labels and texboxes,
dropdown lists all related to VB, plus the address bar would show
something like this: www.somethinghere?id=3

and if you change number 3 from the address bar to (for example) 34 or 71
you would get different page with the same formatting like I.e:
www.somethinghere?id=34 would load the page related to C# topics and all
labels and texboxes and dropdown lists related to C# OR
www.somethinghere?id=71 would load the page related to ASP.NET for
example and labels and textboxes would be populated according to ASP.NET
and so on...

my question is, how do they do that? they must assign an ID number for
each topic but then how they populate all controls on that ONE page
accordingly?

I am very much interested in this approach and wants to know how its done
and how can I get more info about it. I think its better than duplicating
pages if you were going to use them over and over?

what do you think?

please let me know

thanks

 

[Eliyahu Goldin]

id=XX part of the url is available as Request.QueryString.
Request.QueryString["id"] for www.somethinghere?id=71 will return "71".
PageLoad event code can read the id and setup the page controls accordingly.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hello Netasp,

In ASP.NET, dynamically creating webcontrols is naturally supported. Here
are some web articles introducing this:

#HOW TO: Dynamically Create Controls in ASP.NET by Using Visual C# .NET
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317794/EN-US/

#Adding Controls to a Web Forms Page Programmatically
http://authors.aspalliance.com/aspxtreme/webforms/controls/addingcontrolstow
ebformspageprogrammatically.aspx

#How to: Add Controls to an ASP.NET Web Page Programmatically
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/kyt0fzt1.aspx

for your scenario, you want to generate two page UI for different client
user requests(search for VB or c#), I think you need to consider the
following things:

Which one is more important for our application, flexibiilty or
performance?

When we dynamically create the page UI depend on different client requests,
it make the page very flexible and easy to extend when you want to add
additional UI template(such as search for J#...). However, the drawback
here is that dynamically creating control will add performance overhead
which is less efficient than statically compiled and loaded page/controls.
Also, making the page UI dynamically generated will make the line of code
in your page increase significantly.

IMO, for those pages which as definitely different code logic and business
purpose or the UI differ from each other obviously, I would recommend you
create separate page for each one.

If the UI of those pages are similar and easy to be templated, you can
consider creating a page to dynamically generate UI.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further questions.


Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[netasp]

thank you Steven for your reply,

how about this:
I create the page and add all the necessary controls to it, dropdown list,
an image box, labels and some textboxes (with generic names) -// so there is
not an overhead of creating controls dynamically

then, if the user clicks the ASP.NET link for example (and lets say it has
been assigned ID=1) then I go to my database and load the appropriate
control names and images for the C# page! OR if the user clicks C# link
(which lets also assume it has been assigned to ID=21) then I will load from
another table all the appropriate names for labels, textboxes and images for
that C# page.

what do you think? would that cut half of my overhead expenses? considering
the controls are already been created?

I would love to hear your input on this approach.

thank you very much for the links

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for your reply Netasp,

As for the new idea you mentioned, do you mean you predefine all the
controls on the page and assigned fixed ID for each one. and dynamically
load their string resources( such as Text ....) from file or database and
assign to their "Text" property? If this is the case, I think it doable.

Of course, if the controls are defined at design-time, it will save lots of
dynamic control creating and loading overhead.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[netasp]

thanks Steven for your reply,

yeah, this is very much the idea, and I think its better than creating more
than one aspx page that does exactly the same thing.

it seems doable so far, and I will pick up any issues as I advance.

thanks for your help.

best regard,

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for the followup Netasp,

Yes, this is a good idea. Actually, what you do is just how ASP.NET
application do localization support for web pages. ASP.NET support creating
resource files for each page or the whole application and we can load
string or other resource(like image, files) from resource file according
different CultureInfo. So for your case here, instead of depending on
CultureInfo, your page's resource are depend on other criteria.

Please feel free to post here if you meet any further problem.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[netasp]

now I have one final question,
what is the best reliable way of loading a control value from a database?
lets say I have label1 already sitting in my webform how can I load its
content "Books" from a table1 in sql 2005 database?

do I use a normal adapter to loop through? is there a good examples
illustrating how to accomplish that?

thanks

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Netasp,

how you'll read the static data from database depend on how will you use
them. If you will only load them at each page's startup time and will
requrey database if require them later, I suggest you use Sqlcommand +
DataReader to query the data since this will have better performance.

If you will load the data and also cached them in local memory for later
use, you can consider use TableAdpater and return them in the form of
DataTable, Dataset ....

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.