Question

I’ve got a simple ASCX user control (non-MVC). The user control has a property on it (let’s call it Title or something).

I’ve also got an MVC Partial View which contains the user control.

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<SomeModel>" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="tag" TagName="Control" Src="~/path/to/ascx/control.ascx" %>
... snip ...
<tag:Control ID="myControl" runat="server" />

What I’d like to be able to do is something like this:

<tag:Control ID="myControl" runat="server" Title="<%= Model.Title %>" />

… so that I can access some property of the model inside my Control.
Unfortunately this method doesn’t work, as I get a message saying “This is not scriptlet. Will be output as plain text”.

Is what I’m trying to do even possible? If so, does anyone have any ideas how I can try and do it?

If it’s relevant, this is a .Net 4 project, with MVC 2 components.

Thanks!
Neil

Answer 1

Is what I’m trying to do even possible?

Yes but it would be extremely ugly and it involves using a code behind (in an ASP.NET MVC view!!!):

<%@ Page 
    Language="C#" 
    MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" 
    Inherits="AppName.Views.Home.Index" 
    CodeBehind="Index.aspx.cs" 
%>

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server">
    Home Page
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">
    <asp:Label ID="Txt" runat="server" />
</asp:Content>

and in the corresponding code behind Index.aspx.cs (beurk…, I will vomit):

public partial class Index : System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<AppName.Models.MyViewModel>
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Txt.Text = Model.Title;
    }
}

which could be improved like this to avoid the code behind nonsense:

<%@ Page 
    Language="C#" 
    MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" 
    Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<AppName.Models.MyViewModel>" 
%>

<script runat="server">
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Txt.Text = Model.Title;
    }
</script>

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server">
    Home Page
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">
    <asp:Label ID="Txt" runat="server" />
</asp:Content>

I wouldn’t recommend you doing something like this if you intend to migrate to ASP.NET MVC 3 and the Razor view engine one day.