I have an abstract class called Address and I am deriving three classes ; HomeAddress, Work Address, NextOfKin address.
My idea is to bind this to a usercontrol and based on the type of Address it should bind properly to the ASP.NET user control.
My idea is the user control doesn't know which address it is going to present and based on the type it will parse accordingly.
How can I design such a setup, based on the fact that, the user control can take any type of address and bind accordingly.
I know of one method like :- Declare class objects for all the three types (Home,Work,NextOfKin). Declare an enum to hold these types and based on the type of this enum passed to user control, instantiate the appropriate object based on setter injection.
As a part of my generic design, I just created a class structure like this :-
I know I am missing a lot of pieces in design. Can anybody give me an idea of how to approach this in proper way.
Best Answer
In general, you shouldn't. The user control should bind to a concrete type.
A better approach would be to have the base address bits be their own class, and then compose 3 classes for the optional bits, each containing a base address class as a member. The user control can then defer the rendering of the address bits to some sub-control.
Or better yet, simply include the home/work phones and next of kin (and leave them blank if unused). It's not as though those elements are mutually exclusive (or should be anyways...).