Hello all,

   This is what I have been tasked with doing, and I am sort of lost in how to do this. Bascially I need to create forms with questions on it for a user to answer. The DB is set up with the questions and the type of control that should be displayed for answers.
   I guess my confusion comes in on how to add controls(for the answers) dynamically. Also naming them so that they can be accessed from the codebehind. And if they are added dynamically, will events still work, ie.click, selectedindexchanges... etc.
   Any ideas and suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Jim

This is a tricky task. Dynamic control sets can cause lots of problems.

What I see happening is that you need to add all the controls (based on the database results) every time the page runs. This needs to be done early on (page_load might be ok, otherwise you might need to back up to Page_init or even the EnsureChildControls method). Once you have all the controls on the page, normal stuff should apply. The controls added on can be wired to each other if you have question dependancies, etc. Then events should behave.

A note about what I just described. We often see posts like "why doesn't my dropdownlist maintain state?" The replies often say, "because you are binding the control every time". In the case of what I described, the important difference is that you need to load the control versus bind the control's data. When you load all those controls, you'll reload the control structure as it was when the page was constructed and rendered the first time. When a new control is added to the page's controls collection, .NET will try to match it up with what's in viewstate and thus restore its state.

I worked for 4 years at a company that made extensive use of the so-called "question engine". Working with it was the new developer hazing ritual. As of the time I left, we still hadn't really come up with a great solution.

-Peter

   Hey Peter I was hoping you would reply. Thanks for the direction. I guess I am in the same boat you where. The term "question engine" is exactly what the have used. The idea of this sounds great, will allow the users to create their own surveys, but the coding for it just seems like it will be overwhelming.
   Since posting my question, I have been poking around the net, and I found some great articles on 4GuysFromRolla. This article inparticular is very interesting and informative.
http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/092904-1.aspx

Thanks again, and I will be crossing my fingers I can get this done.

I skimmed that article. Looks very interesting. I will have to read that more thoroughly at some point.

Good luck, I'm sure you can figure it out!

-Peter

Peter,
  Another question. I am able to load controls dynamically. In testing this out I see the just get put next to each other like the page was in flow layout. I tried adding to a panel or place holder but with the same results. I guess I can always set the top and left properties, but that takes some of the flexibilty out of the code. How did you do it in your app. In other words, how did you lay out your controls to make them line up etc and look nice, when you don't know how many you will have?

Thanks for the help..

That, my friend, is one of those fabulous things about building a question engine.

You need to either establish a default layout (ex. 2 hard returns between each control) or you need to provide a means to define for each question how it will be layed out.

To get started you can just build it so you add a control, then add some literals ("<br><br>") after the question control. Then take it from there.

-Peter

Ummm that's what I was afraid of. The problem is, if you have many questions, and I will, you will have one very long page.

Thanks for the help :)

Jim

I suppose you could build the page with some limit on the number of displayed questions and build in paging.

Also, depending on how your typical question is layed out I think you could use the datalist control which allows for multi column layout. Or you'll just have to do some custom rendering or at least add in literal controls to handle formatting between each question.

-Peter

Thanks. I am still playing around with some things. I will try your datalist idea. Sound like it might be just what I need.

Peter,

   I am not familiar with the datalist. I have been trying to use it. The problem is in adding the controls dynamically. I get an error:Specified cast is not valid. Have you used the datalist in this way. I am begining to think you must layout controls at design time and bind them.

Thanks for any help,
Jim