Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 4

Chapter 6. ASP.NET Core Server Controls

“Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.”

— George Bernard Shaw

ASP.NET Web Forms pages are typically made of a markup template—the ASPX file—and a back-end class—the code-behind class. In the ASPX template, you find literal text mixed with special markup tags (featuring the runat attribute) that identify server controls. In the code-behind class, you insert some request-processing logic—mostly presentation logic. So what’s the role of server controls?

Server controls are components with a declarative and programming interface used to generate a specific piece of HTML markup based on the request and associated presentation logic. As you saw in Chapter 5, anything you place ...