Custom Server Controls
For the reasons cited earlier in the chapter, user controls are not always the ideal choice for reuse. They tend to be very good for quickly reusing existing user interface elements and code, but are not especially useful for developing reusable building blocks for multiple web applications. This is where custom server controls come in.
A custom server control is, in its essence, a class that derives from
either the Control or
WebControl
class of the
System.Web.UI namespace, or from one
of the classes that derive from these controls. Custom server
controls can be used in your ASP.NET Web Forms pages in very much the
same way you use the built-in server controls that come with ASP.NET.
There are two primary categories of custom server controls:
- Rendered controls
Rendered controls consist largely of custom rendering of the text, tags, and any other output you desire, which may be combined with the rendered output of any base class your control is derived from. Rendered controls override the Render method of the control they derive from. This method is called automatically by the page containing the control when it’s time for the control output to be displayed.
- Compositional controls
Compositional controls get their name from the fact that they are composed of existing controls whose rendered output forms the UI of the custom control. Compositional controls create their constituent controls by overriding the CreateChildControls method of the control they derive ...
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