ASP.Net Code Behind design

Question

I am creating a small asp.net application which contains several .aspx pages. I am not sure about the way to design my code behind (c#).

Example: Lets day I have a web page that loads books from DB and put their names in a HTML list. My code behind need to: 1)

Get the books data from DB.
Create the HTML list
Put the list inside the page source.

One simple way I've found to do it is by:

Class to load data from DB and formatting
HtmlFactory class that create HTML string from objects
Simple property binding to put the generated HTML code inside the page

I guess there are cleaner ways to do the above. I know about MVC, but I guess there are more models for designing the code.

Please describe the way you use to the above or link to relevant data.

Waleed Al-Balooshi · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-13 20:59:01Z

2

ASP.Net comes with a number of controls that make working with data easy. For the example that you have provided I would look into using the Repeater control to easily Bind the list of books that you get from the database to your page. Other Databound controls include:

GridView
ListView
DetailsView
FormView
DataList

All of which make it easy to bind your data to your page.

The best thing is to Layer your application by separating the functionality, ex. Business Layer, Data Access Layer, Presentation Layer, etc. An excellent series of artciles that I have been recommending are the ones by Imar Spaanjar on Building a N-Layer Application.

It has been some time since I have visited his blog, but you might also find a similar set of articles for MVC, but I am not sure about that.

edited Dec 13, 2010 at 20:59

answered Dec 13, 2010 at 20:51

Waleed Al-Balooshi

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RichardW1001 · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-13 21:16:20Z

0

If you're using standard Web Forms ASP.Net (i.e. not MVC), I would use a ListView control for what you're describing. The idea is that you specify a LayoutTemplate, and an ItemTemplate, and databind to your list.

I would steer WELL clear of building HTML as massive long strings and injecting it into your page, debugging that kind of thing is no fun when it inevitably breaks, and it's likely to be a performance dog. ASP.Net Controls are there to do that exact purpose, and have the benefit of thousands/millions of man-hours of development and testing.

My rule of thumb is that HTML is generated by controls designed for that purpose, and the codebehind is just for setting properties on these controls.

Generally speaking for what you described, I would use LinqToSql or more likely Entity Framework to wrap my database access. Depending on the complexity of the project, I might abstract that away behind a repository, but only if it merits doing so. The Linq/EF context represents what you describe as (1), i.e. a single class with responsibility only for database access.

I would then use a ListView control in the page, and bind it on page load.

For example:

<!-- rest of page -->
<asp:ListView ID="ListView_Books" runat="server" ItemPlaceholderID="itemPlaceholder">
   <LayoutTemplate>
      <ul>
         <asp:Placeholder ID="itemPlaceholder" runat="server" />
      </ul>
   </LayoutTemplate>
   <ItemTemplate>
      <li>
         <%# DataItem.Title %>, by <%# DataItem.Author %>
      </li>
   </ItemTemplate>
</asp:ListView>
<!-- rest of page -->

My code behind would then have something like (VB):

Protected Sub Page_Load()
   ListView_Books_Bind()
End Sub

Protected Sub ListView_Books_Bind()
   Dim dataContext As New MyDataContextClass
   ListView_Books.DataSource = dataContext.Books
   ListView_Books.DataBind()
End Sub

Protected Readonly Property DataItem As Book
   Get
      Return DirectCast(Page.GetDataItem(), Book)
   End Get
End Property

Edit - incorporated Pauli's comment - thanks!

edited Dec 13, 2010 at 21:16

answered Dec 13, 2010 at 20:55

RichardW1001

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3 Comments

Pauli Østerø Over a year ago

speaking of performance, the use of Eval is evil because it does runtime binding. Always cast to the correct type and access properties directly :)

Phill Over a year ago

<%# DataItem.Title %>, by <%# DataItem.Author %> <-- this is spaghetti coding. I can't believe people STILL recommend this approach.

RichardW1001 Over a year ago

Phill, we might have different interpretations of spaghetti coding? That's simply injecting an evaluated value. The entire ASP.Net MVC framework using the default view engine is founded on that syntax. Spaghetti coding for me would be interweaving the stuff in the code behind with the content of the page, i.e. tangling together the different purposes of code. Be interested to see a cleaner alternative if you have one you can post?

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