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by John Peterson
Introduction
I’m sure you’ve probably heard (since I’ve done nothing
but talk about it) that we recently went to San Jose to put on our very own
ASP.NET Developer Conference & Expo. While we were there, we talked to a number
of developers and got a good feel for what the attendees were most
looking forward to in ASP.NET. One of the things that kept coming
up was the ability to use code-behind to separate the display and
layout of an ASP.NET page from it’s code and application logic.
Apparently some developers worry about what their sites
look like and as a result they actually work with a graphic designer
or layout artist (I’m not up on the politically correct title)
to get it looking spiffy… who knew! 😉
This is where code-behind really is a godsend. You just send the
graphics person the Web Form portion of your page and they work with that.
They never get to see (or mess with and break) the code that you’ve
spent days working to get just right.
In Visual Studio.NET (VS.NET), this magic is all done for you. Now here’s the
rub… what if you don’t have VS.NET? We’ve always maintained that
while all the fancy tools are nice and might make you more productive,
you don’t need them to develop working solutions using ASP or ASP.NET.
An email from one show attendee brought this whole topic to a head…
here’s an excerpt:
hey, john – i was in the San Jose developer’s conference, i believe i got
a chance to talk to you there a bit…i was searching through asp101 and
not quite able to come up with an answer to a question that’s bothering me,
maybe it’s so obvious no one is answering it, but i can’t quite work
through it alone.i understand that there is a way to run a code-behind page inheriting from
a class in a compiled DLL, yes? from what i’ve read visual studio .net
does this ‘automagically’, but i can’t find any explanation as to what the
magic is, really. i’ve got VS on order, but anyway i’d like to understand
how this stuff works with or without it.
To address the email and since I don’t like to be proven wrong…
here’s how you can implement code-behind using just a plain old text
editor and the tools included in the .NET Framework… no VS.NET required!
What Code-Behind Looks Like in Visual Studio.NET
Before we start, let me take this opportunity to illustrate what
we’re talking about. (I know I said no VS.NET, but it’s just for illustration.)
I’ve fired off VS.NET and added a blank VB Web Form to my project (named
boringly enough WebForm1.aspx). Next I add a button (named Button1) to the page.
Here’s what it looks like:
Figure 1
We’re still basically in that same one file. When I click the button
to add code to it, all of a sudden, a new file (named WebForm1.aspx.vb
after our WebForm1.aspx) opens and VS.NET drops me into it in order to
write the code for the button’s click event.
Figure 2
Here are the code listings for the two resulting files:
<%@ Page Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false"
Codebehind="WebForm1.aspx.vb" Inherits="WebForm1"%>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>WebForm1 Code-Behind Test</title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 7.0">
<meta name="CODE_LANGUAGE" content="Visual Basic 7.0">
<meta name=vs_defaultClientScript content="JavaScript">
<meta name=vs_targetSchema
content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5">
</head>
<body MS_POSITIONING="GridLayout">
<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
<asp:Button id="Button1" runat="server" Text="Button">
</asp:Button>
</form>
</body>
</html>
|
Public Class WebForm1
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page
Protected WithEvents Button1 As System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button
#Region " Web Form Designer Generated Code "
'This call is required by the Web Form Designer.
<System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough()> _
Private Sub InitializeComponent()
End Sub
Private Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Init
'CODEGEN: This method call is required by the Web Form Designer
'Do not modify it using the code editor.
InitializeComponent()
End Sub
#End Region
Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
'Put user code to initialize the page here
End Sub
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
' Do Something When The Button Is Clicked!
End Sub
End Class
|
Once I have VS.NET build my project and request it from a browser, whatever
I type in the button click event handler (Button1_Click) in
WebForm1.aspx.vb will execute when the button on WebForm1.aspx is clicked.
Let’s look at how this is accomplished.
Hot Wiring Our Own Code-Behind Page
Just looking at the listings above… most of this stuff has
nothing to do with the actual code-behind process. The obvious
command to investigate is Codebehind="WebForm1.aspx.vb".
Oddly enough however this doesn’t do anything in ASP.NET… it’s there only
so VS.NET can find the source code! Let me illustrate.
I stripped down the above files and added a label control. I also added a command,
which modifies the label, to the button click event handler (in the code-behind file)
so we can tell when the two files are communicating and have some indication that
the event handler is actually running. As a final step I renamed the files and
classes to WebForm2 to prevent it from working because of anything VS.NET
does behind the scenes… we’re trying to accomplish this on our own!
Here are the resulting 2 file listings:
<%@ Page Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false"
Codebehind="WebForm2.aspx.vb" Inherits="WebForm2"%>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>WebForm2 Code-Behind Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
<asp:Button id="Button1" runat="server" Text="Button">
</asp:Button>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Label id="Label1" runat="server">Label</asp:Label>
</form>
</body>
</html>
|
Public Class WebForm2
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page
Protected WithEvents Button1 As System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button
Protected WithEvents Label1 As System.Web.UI.WebControls.Label
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Label1.Text = "I was clicked at: " & System.DateTime.Now
End Sub
End Class
|
Naturally that would be too easy… when you try and run WebForm2.aspx,
you’ll get an error something like this:
Parser Error Message: Could not load type ‘WebForm2’.
Don’t worry… all is not lost. The problem is simply that it can’t find
the class we define in our code-behind file. Normally VS.NET will
automatically compile the .vb file into a .dll and place it in your
application’s /bin directory. Since we’re not using VS.NET,
it wasn’t compiled and the application can’t find the appropriate class.
There are two solutions – compile it manually or tell the .aspx file where
to find the .vb source file.
Compiling it manually is really pretty easy. The command will look something like this:
vbc /t:library /out:bin\WebForm2.dll /r:System.dll /r:System.Web.dll WebForm2.aspx.vb
I’m not going to go into all the compiler options, but basically we’re taking
WebForm2.aspx.vb and compiling it into a dll named WebForm2.dll and placing it
in the application’s /bin directory.
This option is the better approach if you need complete control over your compiler
options or if you will be distributing the application without the .vb source files.
Being the lazy type, I tend to go for option 2… check out this code listing:
<%@ Page Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false"
Src="WebForm2.aspx.vb" Inherits="WebForm2"%>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>WebForm3 Code-Behind Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
<asp:Button id="Button1" runat="server" Text="Button">
</asp:Button>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Label id="Label1" runat="server">Label</asp:Label>
</form>
</body>
</html>
|
Looks just like the last one doesn’t it… well not quite… notice that instead
of the Codebehind="WebForm2.aspx.vb" we now have
Src="WebForm2.aspx.vb". While Codebehind doesn’t mean
anything to ASP.NET, Src (short for source) does and the code-behind file will
compile on the fly just like the .aspx file.
Note: Don’t worry… you’re not missing a file… I’ve got WebForm3.aspx
running off the same code-behind file as WebForm2.aspx since the two .vb files
would be identical anyway.
Some Final Notes
In order for .NET to find your classes, make sure your compiled files are stored
in the /bin directory off the root of your application. You need to make sure
you’ve set your directory up as an IIS application or else ASP.NET will go up the tree until
it finds one and end up at the /bin directory of the root application if it doesn’t
find one sooner.
Those of you using VS.NET might have noticed my Inherits
statements are short a project name. That’s because VS.NET creates a
separate namespace for each project it creates. It’s easy enough to do just use
the Namespace command, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. I’m only
mentioning it so you don’t panic when you see an inherits line that looks like this:
<%@ Page Language="vb" Inherits="ProjectName.WebForm2"%>
Wrap Up
So to sum everything up… all it really takes to do code-behind is one little
inherits attribute in your page declaration line specifying the name of the
class you want to inherit. If you’re willing to precompile your classes into
.dll files, that’s where it stops. If you’re lazy like me or like the "edit and run"
simplicity that classic ASP gave you, add a src attribute pointed at your
code-behind file and ASP.NET will compile it for you. That’s really all
there is to it.
If you don’t want to copy and paste the code listings, you can get all 5 files
in zip file format below.
