Question

I have a solution that works, yet it doesn’t meet the QA requirements from the customer. Problem is I can’t control the location of the WebControls, they need to be relative to a chart that is above these. How I see it, I need to “compile” the sb.ToString() into a WebControl, which I’ll then be able to Controls.Add().

I need to go from this working solution:

private void SetTextBoxes()
{
TextBox myBox = new TextBox();
System.Web.UI.WebControls.Label myLabel =
new System.Web.UI.WebControls.Label();

    // <table><tr>
    for (int i = 0; i < _module.Values.Count; i++)
    {
        myLabel = new System.Web.UI.WebControls.Label();
        myLabel.Text = _module.Values[i].Text.ToString() + ": ";

        myBox = new TextBox();
        myBox.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.None;
        myBox.ReadOnly = true;
        myBox.Text = _module.Values[i].Value.ToString("n0");

        myBox.Columns = myBox.Text.Length;

        // <td align="center">
        Controls.Add(myLabel);
        Controls.Add(myBox);
        // </td>
    }
    // </tr></table>
}

Key is the Controls.Add() as it ties into a modular system covering this code and a few other WebControls.

I have a suggestion to what the solution may look like.

private string WriteHtml()
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    using (StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter(sb))
    {
        using (HtmlTextWriter htmlTextWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(stringWriter))
        {
            htmlTextWriter.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Table);
            htmlTextWriter.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Tr);

            for (int i = 0; i < _module.Values.Count; i++)
            {
                htmlTextWriter.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Td);

                htmlTextWriter.Write(string.Format("{0}: {1:n0}"
                    , _module.Values[i].Text
                    , _module.Values[i].Value));

                htmlTextWriter.RenderEndTag(); // td
            }
            htmlTextWriter.RenderEndTag(); // tr
            htmlTextWriter.RenderEndTag(); // table
        }
    }

    //Controls.Add(sb.ToString());
    return sb.ToString();
}

Answer 1

I solved almost the same task. Here is my results:

1) I created small helper method:

   public static void RenderControl(Control control, HtmlTextWriter response)
        {
            var sWriter = new StringWriter();
            var htmlWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(sWriter);

            control.RenderControl(htmlWriter);

            // Write HTML
            response.WriteLine(sWriter);
            response.Flush();
        }

2) At main code if you want to get rendered Html you are doing somthing like this:

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    using (StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter(sb))
    {
        using (HtmlTextWriter htmlTextWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(stringWriter))
        {
          Control control= new YourControlWithTextBox();
          WebControlHelper.RenderControl(control, htmlTextWriter);
          return stringWriter.ToString();
        }
    }

With this implementation you can leave SetTextBoxes() as is. And you get 2 version of same control. Here is 2 huge benefits:
a)code is still readable and described in asp.net terms.
b)you can use WebControlHelper.RenderControl everywhere where you need solve simmilar task