Calling a Asp.net UI Experts

RangerGuy posted on Wednesday, September 20, 2006

My Clsa bjects are about 90% done now :)

So for a change of pace I wanted validate some of my ideas on how we can handle our UI requirements. We are going to have some Composite Controls (Asp.net 2.0 flavour)

I have my first one working good and validating the input from the user nicely.
My problem is formatting. The control has a Label,Radiobuttonlist and 2 validators (required field and regex validator). I want the "*" to show up on the right side of the fields when an error is raised. Is it possible to do this. I"ve tried creating table / row / cell
objects and adding the controls to the appropriate cells of row but the only controls that end up in there are the validators :(

Also.. I'm trying to figure out how to change the background color of the rows that are generated to hold the individual radio buttons of
the radiobuttonlist object. I have been searching online most of today.. looking for a good tutorial and experimenting with not much luck.
What is the best way to apply a layout to a composite control. My controls will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.CompositeControl

I know this isn't really Csla related but any help would be really really appreciated :)

figuerres replied on Wednesday, September 20, 2006

RangerGuy:
My Clsa bjects are about 90% done now :)

So for a change of pace I wanted validate some of my ideas on how we can handle our UI requirements. We are going to have some Composite Controls (Asp.net 2.0 flavour)

I have my first one working good and validating the input from the user nicely.
My problem is formatting. The control has a Label,Radiobuttonlist and 2 validators (required field and regex validator). I want the "*" to show up on the right side of the fields when an error is raised. Is it possible to do this. I"ve tried creating table / row / cell
objects and adding the controls to the appropriate cells of row but the only controls that end up in there are the validators :(

Also.. I'm trying to figure out how to change the background color of the rows that are generated to hold the individual radio buttons of
the radiobuttonlist object. I have been searching online most of today.. looking for a good tutorial and experimenting with not much luck.
What is the best way to apply a layout to a composite control. My controls will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.CompositeControl

I know this isn't really Csla related but any help would be really really appreciated :)

first I think I know what you are trying to get working with the validators....

when I setup a web form I have a validation summary, the "items" the validators and the submit button etc...

I use a table with 3 columns label , input (textbox etc...), error/validator

you need to set the right properties for it to do the "right thing" dynamic display, message and text each have to be setup right.

.Display = Dynamic

.Text = "*"

.ErrorMessage = "Some Error"

should cause no display untill validation fails, an "*" on the line that fails, the message in the validation summary control.

see if that works right for you...

RangerGuy replied on Thursday, September 21, 2006

Thanks :) figuerres Sorry for the delayed post.. I've been working like mad today building these controls. So I got 3 done.. thanks to your help :) I have noticed that I need to loop thru all the controls in the page for the validation summary to display all the errors. I created this function to find the a specific control from the form.

protected Control IterateThroughChildren(Control parent,string controlID)
{
Control foundControl = null;

foreach (Control c in parent.Controls)
{
if (c.ID == controlID)
{
return c;
}
if (c.Controls.Count > 0)
{
foundControl = IterateThroughChildren(c, controlID);
if (foundControl != null)
{
return foundControl;
}
}

}
return null;
}
If I don't put the following code in the page_load method. My validation summary control does not display the error messages. Any Ideas why it would need me to loop through all the controls manually?

if (Page.IsPostBack)
{

foreach (CustomerInfo cInfo in _customerlist)
{
_radiobuttonlist = (RadioButtonList)IterateThroughChildren(PlaceHolder1, "Cust" + cInfo .CustID);
if (_radiobuttonlist != null)
{
if (_radiobuttonlist.SelectedItem != null)
{
Response.Write("

" + _radiobuttonlist.SelectedItem.ToString());
}
}
}
}