.Net Framework Essentials

ASP.NET Application Development

In conventional ASP programming, developers typically access the Request object to get the parameters needed to render the page and render the content of the page through either the Response object or code rendering blocks. We also use other ASP objects such as the Application, Session, and Server objects to manage application variables, session variables, server settings, and so on.

As mentioned earlier, ASP.NET is intended to change all this spaghetti madness by introducing a much cleaner approach to server-side scripting framework: Web Forms, or programmable pages, and server controls.

In the following sections, we cover the components of a Web Form, its life cycles, the server controls that the Web Form contains, event handing for these server controls, as well as how to create your own server controls.

Web Form Components

Similar to VB Forms, a Web Form consists of two components: the form with its controls and the code behind it that handles events associated with the form’s controls. A Web Form has the file extension .aspx and contains HTML elements, as well as server controls. The code behind the form is usually located in a separate class file. Note that while it is possible to have both the form and the code in one file, it is better to have separate files. This separation of user interface and application code helps improve the spaghetti-code symptom that most ASP-based applications are plagued with.

ASP.NET provides the Page class in ...