Question

Suppose I have to populate an unordered list with data from a Dictionary in a project not using MVC. I’m sure ASP.Net lovers will tell me to populate everything from code-behind.
But… should I?

Via embedded code:

<ul>
<% foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> item in MyDictonary) { %>
    <li><%= item.Key %>: <strong><%= item.Value %></strong></li>
<% } %>
</ul>

I agree it is not a lot clean, but the alternative is a lot worse as I got to write HTML markup directly from my method:

public void writeMyDictionary() {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append("<ul>");

    foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> item in MyDictonary) {
        sb.AppendFormat("<li>{0}: <strong>{1}</strong></li>", item.Key, item.Value);
    }

    sb.Append("</ul>");
    MyControl.Text = sb.ToString();
}

So, why should I use code-behind to populate all my controls?

Answer 1

For this use case, there is no particular value to doing it in code behind.

I would rather use the markup version instead of the code behind, as you have posted them, but chances are I would simply go with data binding on a Repeater, as it would be the cleanest solution.