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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T00:30:28+00:00

A simple question, I think: I want to put a tag into an ASP.NET

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A simple question, I think:

I want to put a tag into an ASP.NET app I’ve been asked to maintain, so I’m coming at this from a newbie point of view just tinkering around the edges without knowing a lot.

I wrote an old ASP application back in 1998, so I am just running on memory…

How do I write some output to the webpage?

I know I can use an 

<asp:label id="blah">

but then I need to define a Label blah; in my code behind and then assign it.

I believe that I can put in-place:

<% Response.Write("sometext"); %>

and that will write sometext in the location within the page. (Am I correct?)

Lastly, I remember there was a syntax to the effect of

<%= "some string" %>

but I can’t find the documentation on it, to say either it is deprecated, unadvised, or the rationale for such a decision.

I have tried googling for “ASP.NET grammar” but I can’t even find a good description that “<%=” even exists, though it is mentioned in a few blogs.

For something simple, like inject the global version number, or the current date, then I can’t see anything particularly wrong with in-place composition – it would save me defining 15 labels and having to initialise them all – though perhaps the asp:label approach could reference one global instance of a label?

Just asking for opinions on good practices 🙂

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    <%= string %> is perfectly valid ASP.NET syntax. The reason you will often find references to problems with using that is people use <%= (equivalent to Response.Write) when they should use <%# (for databinding) or vice-versa.

    For example, we use it very extensively in our content managed site, where we pull in values from a global settings repository:

    <%= SiteContext.Current.GetSetting("SiteTitle") %>

    MSDN:

    Some others suggest <%= is not a “best practice” or a very good approach, but I strongly disagree with that sentiment. For an MVC-ish type site (especially a site that is template- or view-driven in some way), the most direct approach is frequently more effective than using server controls.

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