Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET Programmer's Cookbook

Load User Controls Programmatically

Problem

You want to dynamically build the user interface of a page out of one or more user controls.

Solution

Use the Page.LoadControl method to load the control object from its .ascx file, and add it to the Controls collection of a container control.

Discussion

User controls are self-contained groups of controls. Like Web forms, user controls consist of a layout portion that defines the contained controls (.ascx file), and a code-behind portion with the event-handling logic (.vb file). User controls allow you to reuse common interface elements on multiple pages and build complex interfaces out of smaller building blocks. One useful characteristic of user controls is that they can be loaded programmatically, which ...