Question

My aspx pages pages are drived from a base class, my base class creates the dynamic header of my website. I have a method called “genMenu” and i call in within pageLoad event of base class to create menu.
In some pages i need to override this method, however as we know page load of base class fires before the pageLoad of drived pages. So i cant really do that.

So how can i override the genMenu in aspx page and NoT fire it within base class. I know i can manually call the genMenu function in all drived pages, and not call it within pageLoad of base class, but there has to be a better way of handling it.

Answer 1

Create a virtual method called GenerateMenu or something like that, and always call it from the base page. Do the actual work there. Then your derived pages that need to intercept it can override that instead.

E.g., something like this:

// Base page

protected SomeType MenuVariable;

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    this.GenerateMenu();
}

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) {
    this.GetMenuVariable();
}

private void GetMenuVariable() {
    // Some stuff with query string or the database
    this.MenuVariable = FooBar();
}

protected virtual void GenerateMenu() {
    // Generate the menu here 
}

And:

// Derived page

protected override void GenerateMenu() {
    // Calls from the base page Load event
    // will be intercepted by this override
    // Do the alternate work for this page
    // here
}