When “must” I use asp.net CreateChildControls()

asp.net

While it seems that the "right" way to make a server control is to construct all child controls inside CreateChildControls call. But since it's difficult to know when it will be called (which is the whole point as a perf optimzation), I see most of our devs construct in OnInit, or OnLoad. And this works 99% of the case.

Are there cases where we have to use CreateChildControls?

Best Answer

You should ALWAYS construct your child controls in CreateChildControls. This is the proper time in the Lifecycle to initialize and add them to the control tree. One of the reasons for this is that many times the method EnsureChildContols is called, which then calls CreateChildControls if necessary. Best Practice, just do it.

Related Solutions

R – create the child controls in CreateChildControls() on a CompositeControl

what you're describing IS a databound control. And yes, it's somewhat complicated, but it's the proper design paradigm for this type of instance.

That said, had you considered utilizing the repeater control rather than trying to roll out your own composite which behaves in the exact same manner? Rather than passing it a random object, pass it a collection or an iList with the number of text areas you're wanting.

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

R – create the child controls in CreateChildControls() on a CompositeControl

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

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