Question

I have an asp.net page with a button. This button generates and inserts a user control into the page, so many controls could exist on one page. I need to validate that a certain dynamically generated control inside the generated control exists.

So..Page has 0 to N Control1’s. Each Control 1 can have 0 to N Control2’s. When SaveButton is clicked on Page, I need to make sure there are at least 1 Control2’s inside every Control1.

I’m currently between two options:

• Dynamically insert CustomValidators for each control that is generated, each of which would validate one Control1.

• Do the validation manually (with jQuery), calling a validation function from SaveButton.OnClientClick.

Both are sloppy in their own way – which is why I’m sharing this with you all. Am I missing the easy solution?

Thanks in advance.. (btw – anything up to and including .NET 3.5 SP1 is fair game)

Answer 1

Hmm i like the Interface idea suggested by digiguru but i would use the interface on the container Control1 instead of the sub controls as it seems like the more logical place for the code to live. Heres my take on it:

public interface IValidatableControl {     bool IsValidControl();     } 

then implement this on your Control1

public class Control1 : IValidatableControl { ... Other methods     public bool IsValidControl()     {          foreach(object c in this.Controls)         {             if(c.GetType() == 'Control2')                 return true;         }         return false;     }  } 

There are probably better ways to write this but it should give you enough of an idea to get started.