Dynamically Adding Wired Controls to Web Forms (Cont.) The Page Event Life Cycle This is where a thorough understanding of the page event life cycle comes into play. ASP.NET differs from classic ASP in many ways, one of which is the way in which client-side interaction is handled once you submit it back to the server. In classic ASP, the developer handled this process, which meant that the server handled each page in a unique manner. ASP.NET changed this by imposing a structured event life cycle that introduced a uniform series of function members (methods) that are executed consistently each and every time that it renders a Web Form. The function members that handle events are listed and described in Table 1 in the order in which they are processed. By far, the most commonly used function member listed in Table 1 is the OnLoad() function member. In fact, when you create any type of ASP.NET Web item such as a Web Form or a Web user control, Visual Studio .NET automatically adds this function member to the code behind class for you, whereas you must manually add (override) most of the other function members. In this function member, the current values of the controls on the Web Form are available and code may interact directly with them. Let me state a few very important observations in relation to dynamically created controls. You can dynamically create controls and wire events into them at any point in the execution process. However, you can only wire events into a control in either the OnInit() function member or in the OnLoad() function member. If the events are encountered at any other point in the cycle of events, it will not cause an exception to be thrown but it will have no affect on the control. The code snippet below shows an example of wiring an event into a control in the OnInit() function. // Override the OnInit() method.
override protected void OnInit(EventArgs e)
{
// Dynamically create controls that do not
// depend upon data on the Web Form.
Button companyDetailsButton = new Button();
companyDetailsButton.Click += new EventHandler(this.ShowDetailAccounting);
{
Levels of Events ASP.NET implements three levels of events: validation, cached, and PostBack Validation events are handled by validation controls on the client's machine at the page level via snippets of JScript embedded in the page. Validation events will either return a true or false value based upon the success of the validation process. If validation fails, the controls will not allow the page to be posted back to the server. Depending upon the type of control you use, each ASP.NET Web server control may raise events based upon user interaction. For instance, a DropDownListbox control will raise a SelectedIndexChanged event when the user selects a different option from the DropDownListbox. If the control has its AutoPostBack property set to true, raising certain events will cause the page to be posted back to the server. By default, only the Button, LinkButton, and ImageButton controls automatically cause the page to be posted back to the server. When controls raise events that do not cause the page to be posted back to the server, a note that the event was raised is cached in the ViewState of the page. Cached events are handled in the postback process just after the OnLoad() function member has completed executing. 
Figure 3: The CompanyInformation Web Form with dynamically created and wired buttons in the OnLoad() method.The PostBack event is raised by any control that has its AutoPostBack property set to true. The event raised by the control that caused the postback to occur is handled in the postback process just after the cached events have been processed. The PostBack event is the final event processed in the page event life cycle. A Limitation to Dynamic Creation You should know about one important limitation in the sequence that ASP.NET uses to process events that directly impacts my technique for dynamically creating controls. You cannot dynamically create a control and wire an event into it in a cached event or in the PostBack event. ASP.NET processes cached events and the PostBack event after the OnLoad() function member and OnInit() function member have completed processing. Conclusion Many complex Web applications require forms to be created and rendered dynamically. The ability to dynamically add controls and content to forms has been an intrinsic feature of both classic ASP and ASP.NET. Microsoft ASP.NET vastly expands the process. Expertise in the dynamic creation process requires a thorough understanding of the ASP.NET page event life cycle. | " |
You should not add a control directly to a Web Form because the code generated for the control will be inserted at the end of the HTML stream or just after the </html> closing tag.
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You can only wire events into controls in either the OnInit() function member or the OnLoad() function member; if the control is dependant upon data on the Web Form, then the OnLoad() method is the only option.
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You cannot dynamically create a control and wire an event into it in a cached event or in the PostBack event. Cached events and the PostBack event get processed after the OnLoad() function member and OnInit() function member have completed processing.
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Shannon A Horn |