Question

I have the following function:

public void rpSearchResults_ItemDataBound(Object Sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item || e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.AlternatingItem)
    {
        System.Data.Common.DbDataRecord rd = (System.Data.Common.DbDataRecord)e.Item.DataItem;

        Literal litCompanyName = (Literal)e.Item.FindControl("litCompanyName");
        Literal litCompanyLocation = (Literal)e.Item.FindControl("litCompanyLocation");
        Literal litCompanyActivity = (Literal)e.Item.FindControl("litCompanyActivity");
        HiddenField hdnUserID = (HiddenField)e.Item.FindControl("hdnUserID");
        HyperLink lnkEmail = (HyperLink)e.Item.FindControl("lnkEmail");
        HyperLink lnkMicrosite = (HyperLink)e.Item.FindControl("lnkMicrosite");
        Literal litRecommends = (Literal)e.Item.FindControl("litRecommends");

        litCompanyName.Text = rd["CompanyName"].ToString();

        // Construct location info
        litCompanyLocation.Text = "";
        string[] addressParts = {"City","Region","Postcode"};
        bool prior = false;
        foreach (String part in addressParts){
            if (prior) litCompanyLocation.Text = litCompanyLocation.Text + ", ";

            string addressBit = rd[part].ToString();
            if (addressBit == null || addressBit.Trim() == "") prior = false;
            else
            {
                litCompanyLocation.Text = litCompanyLocation.Text + rd[part].ToString();
                prior = true;
            }
        }

        // ... and so on, mapping stuff from the database to fields.
    }
}

It is fired by an event on my Repeater, and is used to populate a list of search results. All the various controls being found are present in the Item Template for the repeater.

This all works, but I hate having to do it like this. I hate having to search for a control by string, and I hate having to do casts to get the controls into a state I can manipulate. If anything goes wrong – for instance, if I make a typo – the error is only picked up at runtime, and it can often be quite difficult to track down, as these functions seem to fail silently, rather than creating a big noticeable error page.

This code is written now, and it works. But in the future I’d like to write it in a different way that is strongly typed, so that any errors will make themselves known at compile time. Is there any way to do this?

Answer 1

You can put all your controls into a strongly-typed custom control (including ASCX user controls) and only have to use FindControl() once:

CustomControl myControl= (CustomControl) e.Item.FindControl("oMyControl");

myControl.litCompanyName.Text = rd["CompanyName"].ToString();