Question

In the MSDN page lifecycle reference it states that the pre-init is used to “Create or re-create dynamic controls.”

However, elsewhere on MSDN, an example implies that a dynamic user control should be loaded in Page_Load

Is this a contradiction? Or is pre-init used only for standard aspx controls?

What have I missed 🙂

Edit:
Either way works, however, there is presumably some benefit of one approach over the other.

(WebUserControl1 is a UserControl with a simple label property, SomeProperty)

protected override void OnPreInit(EventArgs e)
{
    base.OnPreInit(e);
    WebUserControl1 wc1 = LoadControl(@"~\WebUserControl1.ascx") as WebUserControl1;
    wc1.SomeProperty = "Hello World";
    Controls.Add(wc1);
}

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    WebUserControl1 wc1 = LoadControl(@"~\WebUserControl1.ascx") as WebUserControl1;
    wc1.SomeProperty = "Hello World";
    Controls.Add(wc1);
}

Answer 1

The answer is it depends on your custom control. If your user control doesn’t need anything to happen before page_load, then you can go ahead and add your control during page load, if you have code in your user control that executes at an earlier time, then you should add your control at an earlier stage as the MSDN article suggests.