response.write(hyperlink)

adolphus · April 27th, 2004, 12:42 AM

Hey everyone, ive been trying to figue out how to take a web address stored in an array and output it as a hyperlink on my page. I've searched the web forever and i finally came across this site. here is a sample of my code.

Dim outputlist(136) as string
outputlist(1) = "http://www.johnrules.com"

Response.Write("<a href = '" & outputlist(1) & "'>" & "</a>")

is this the best way to do this? If there is another way (table, database, whatever, I'm open to suggestions. The size of the array is going to vary based on user so the amount of hyperlinks being output has to be dynamic.
Thanks in advance for your help
--j

bmains · April 27th, 2004, 07:02 AM

You can create a hyperlink on the fly and pass in the URL for the NavigateURL property, then add it to the page. Response.Write() will work too; it's how things were done in the ASP world.

adolphus · April 27th, 2004, 02:50 PM

Now I'm sure I sound like an idiot, but how do you create a hyperlink on the fly? all of this code is going in the pageload section on my xxx.aspx.vb page, and it says that hyperlinks are not valid objects? and if response.write() works, do i have a syntactic error, because i have tried numereous ways but it only outputs a string or nothing at all. sorry for the dummy questions on my part.

Imar · April 28th, 2004, 12:40 AM

Hi adolphus,

Are you still looking for a solution for this?

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

bmains · April 28th, 2004, 07:09 AM

Dim objLink as New System.Web.UI.WebControls.HyperLink
objLink.ID = "some ID"

Page.Controls.Add(objLink)

Actually in the page you will probably want to have a container control such as a panel and add the control to that.

Panel.Controls.Add(objLink)

Help this helps,

Brian

adolphus · April 28th, 2004, 07:09 AM

actually i figured it out last night.
dim outputlist(136)
outputlist(1) = "<a href = ""Http://www.disney.com"">Web Page Design</a>"
outputlist(2)...

instead of trying to store just the address, i stored the whole hyperlink code into the string array and wrote it out to the page with
for i=0 to 136
response.write(outputlist(i))

thanks for the help anyway :)

Imar · April 28th, 2004, 07:41 AM

Yeah, that would work well. However, IMO, you're not really using .NET the way it's supposed to be used. Using Response.Write is "classic" ASP and will get you into troubles in .NET. This is because you cannot really control the location of the output of Response.Write. If you add code like that in Page_Load it will end up somewhere at the top of your page.

In .NET, it makes much more sense to use a databound control, like a DataList. You can bind this list to a datasource, like an array of HyperLink objects. The following example shows you what I mean:

Code:

<%@ Page Language="VB" %>
<script runat="server">
    Sub Page_Load(Sender As Object, E As EventArgs)

        Dim HyperLinks(1) As HyperLink

        HyperLinks(0) = New HyperLink
        HyperLinks(0).Text = "The Disney Site"
        HyperLinks(0).NavigateUrl = "http://www.disney.com"

        HyperLinks(1) = New HyperLink
        HyperLinks(1).Text = "Yahoo"
        HyperLinks(1).NavigateUrl = "http://www.yahoo.com"

        lstTest.DataSource = HyperLinks
        lstTest.DataBind()

    End Sub
</script>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <asp:datalist id="lstTest" runat="server">
    <headertemplate>
        [list]
    </headertemplate>
    <itemtemplate>
        <li>
        <asp:hyperlink id="hyperTest" 
        navigateurl='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "NavigateUrl")%>' 
        runat="server">
        <%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Text")%>
        </asp:hyperlink>
        </li>
    </itemtemplate>
    <footertemplate>
        </ul>
    </footertemplate>
    </asp:datalist>
</body>
</html>

I prefer this kind of stuff over using Response.Write. This way of coding has a few benefits:

1. Clear separation of UI and code. You can change the layout of the page without affecting the code.
2. It's easy to modify the code; it's clean, simple and not mixed with markup
3. Additions are easily made. Want the Disney tag to open in a new Window? Just add this line:

HyperLinks(0).Target = "_blank"

It may take some time to get used to this kind of programming syntax, and the databinding syntax may look difficult and odd at first, but I am sure in the end it will improve the quality of the applications you can write.

Just my 2 cents....

Imar

---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
While typing this post, I was listening to: Bombtrack by Rage Against The Machine (Track 1 from the album: Rage Against The Machine) What's This?

megasol · September 11th, 2006, 03:05 AM

Dim myHyperLinks As HyperLink

        myHyperLinks = New HyperLink
        myHyperLinks.Text = "The Asp.net Resource Site"
        myHyperLinks.NavigateUrl = "http://www.megasolutions.net"

form.controls.add(myhyperlinks)

hope it works.