Question

OK, let me be more specific. I know how to create a control with a collection property, but what I’ve never done is written one that has markup associated with it.

What I want to know is, given an control defined like this …

public class MyControl 
{
    public List<MySubItems> Items {get; set;}
}

What do I have to do to be able to create markup, like this…

<MyStuff:MyControl runat="server" ID="MyControl1">
  <Items>
    <MySubItem ... />
    <MySubItem ... />
  </Items>
</MyStuff:MyControl>

Apologies if this seems a bit of a noddy question, but I’ve never done this before.

—
Stuart

Answer 1

You’ll need to apply the DesignerSerializationVisibilityAttribute along with PersistenceModeAttribute on your property. Assuming it’s a ASP.NET control.

This is what it would look like –

public class MyControl:WebControl
{
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Content),
    PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerDefaultProperty)]
    public List<MySubItems> Items {get; set;}
}

See MSDN: Web Control Collection Property Example for a detailed example.