Question

I have a user control (.ascx) in my project that I am adding to a page programmatically in the page’s Page_Load event handler, like so:

Controls.Add(new MyProject.Controls.ControlWidget()); Databind(); 

When I try to access the control’s child controls from within the control itself, they do not exist.

public override void DataBind() {   myrepeater.DataSource = GetDataSource();    // throws an exception because myrepeater is null    base.DataBind(); } 

How do I access the user control’s child controls? I have tried adding a call to EnsureChildControls() to my DataBind() override but that doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Answer 1

You need to use LoadControl to load it, not just instantiate the class. LoadControl does ‘magic’ behind the scenes to tie everything up and instantiate the front end.