Advice wanted

pes2002 · February 23rd, 2009, 01:39 PM

My app needs to present web pages whose content is determined by previous user input - for example, the user enters "3" and the next page contains two radio buttons and a text box, but if he enters "4" it contains a text area and a drop-down list. Of course it's a bit more complex than this and I have a static definition held in a XML structure that defines what controls should be produced for each user input.

My initial thoughts were to use ASP and just use response.write to create the pages, but I wondered if it is possible to use ASPX in a dynamic way (things like client side validation would be useful). For example, would it make sense to generate ASPX code and compile it for each new page?

As a second issue, I was planning to create an object structure from the XML, but as I understand it I would have to do this at the start of each interaction (albeit from a cached version of the XML file). Is there a way to make a fairly complex object structure persist?

Imar · February 23rd, 2009, 02:06 PM

Hi there,

Is this related to the book Beginning ASP.NET 3.5? If not, you may be better off posting this in one of the general ASP.NET forums as more people are able to join the discussion.

Anyway, yes you can dynamically create controls. For example, try this:

1. Add a PlaceHolder control to a new page

2. Add this to the code behind:

TextBox myBox = new TextBox();
myBox.ID = "SomeID";
PlaceHolder1.Controls.Add(myBox);

Remember, you'll need to recreate the whole control hierarchy every time the page loads (that is, initial loads and postbacks). So, instead of pesisting it, you'll need to recreate it. Also be aware of submitted state. You typically need to create controls in an early event like PreInit.

For more info: http://www.google.com/search?hl=nl&q...le+zoeken&meta=

Another way is to create User Controls on the fly the first time the page is requested, then save them to disk as .ascx files and reuse them on subsequent requests.

Cheers,

Imar