Question

I have a program that displays messages posted to a forum. Right now, I am using the Response.Write method in the code behind to insert the HTML I want. But I would much rather avoid putting HTML in the code behind (because it is not in the spirit of the whole code behind/design separation feature of .NET). I would like to use a content placeholder, and insert child controls dynamically. However, I can only seem to insert them side by side, and one after another. I would like to have something that looks like this:

Table Column 1       Table Column 2
Username: [UserName]      
[MessageSubject]
Posted on: [PostDate]
User Rating: [UserRating]

But the only thing I can seem to accomplish is:

Username: [UserName]Posted On: [PostDate] User Rating [UserRating][MessageSubject], without links or formatting.

How do I put paragraphs, line breaks, form buttons and regular hyperlinks into a content placeholder, and make them align the way I want them to?

Answer 1

You do it much the same way as you would int the .aspx page, for example:

Table table = new Table(); TableRow row1 = new TableRow(); table.Rows.Add(row1); TableCell cell1 = new TableCell(); TableCell cell2 = new TableCell(); row1.Cells.Add(cell1); row1.Cells.Add(cell2); Label label1 = new Label(); label1.Text = 'Username:'; cell1.Controls.Add(label1); TextBox textBox1 = new TextBox(); textBox1.ID = 'userNameTextBox'; cell2.Controls.Add(textBox1); // and so on... myPlaceholder.Controls.Add(table); 

would be equivalent to:

<asp:Table runat='server'>   <asp:TableRow runat='server'>     <asp:TableCell runat='server'>       <asp:Label runat='server' Text='Username:' />     </asp:TableCell>     <asp:TableCell runat='server'>       <asp:TextBox runat='server' ID='userNameTextBox' />     </asp:TableCell>   </asp:TableRow> </asp:Table> 

Of course the code could be cleverer, this is just to illustrate the point. Any hierarchy of controls you can build declaratively to control you layout, you can do programatically too.