Afroblanca

I want to have re-usable page elements on my site. These elements will be laid out in HTML, and will use server controls and custom controls.
A simple example for a page element would be something like this:

<b>foo!bar! <jl:MyCustomControl id=\"myCustom\" runat=\"server\"></jl:MyCustomControl> baz!quux!</b>
(where jl is the tag prefix for the namespace that contains my custom controls)

It would seem that .ASCX user controls would be perfect for something like this. However, user controls cannot be used across applications. .NET 2.0 gives us the ability to precompile user controls, which are then usable across applications. However, I need a non-programmer to be able to make changes to these user controls. Hence, precompiling seems to be out of the question.

I feel like I can accomplish what I need by saving a given page element to a string in the database. We'll call this string the "input string". I can then render the input string through a user control of some sort. However, there's a snag - how do I render the input string in such a way that the control tags are properly rendered as controls?

I've tried to do simple things like this :
this.Response.Write(strInputString);

However, in place of my custom control, it outputs nothing at all.
What are some good strategies for solving this problem? Is it necessary to have something that parses the input string, builds a controls hierarchy, and then adds that hierarchy to the webform? If so, is there anything built into .NET that can help me?

u2orange

Have you thought of exposing the properties of your control so you can pass parameters to it?

HTH

Afroblanca

I will certainly be using parameters to change the appearance of some things. Stylesheets are useful in this respect as well. However, I'm talking about changing the basic layout of an element. So, imagine that I have some sort of sidebar with lots of different controls - ad rotators, images, hyperlinks, etc. I want to give the designer the ability to move these about and change their appearance at will.

I've done a bit more research into user controls, and it seems like I may be able to use the precompilation feature in .NET 2.0 after all. Apparently, one can precompile the codebehind, and then make changes to the .ascx without recompiling. One can even add controls to the .ascx without recompiling, provided that the controls don't need to be declared in the codebehind.

Does anybody here have experience with this?