Loading a Template From a User Control
- by Ricardo Peres
What if you wanted to load a template (ITemplate property) from an external user control (.ascx) file? Yes, it is possible; there are a number of ways to do this, the one I'll talk about here is through a type converter. You need to apply a TypeConverterAttribute to your ITemplate property where you specify a custom type converter that does the job. This type converter relies on InstanceDescriptor. Here is the code for it:
public class TemplateTypeConverter: TypeConverter
{
public override Boolean CanConvertFrom(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type sourceType)
{
return ((sourceType == typeof(String)) || (base.CanConvertFrom(context, sourceType) == true));
}
public override Boolean CanConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type destinationType)
{
return ((destinationType == typeof(InstanceDescriptor)) || (base.CanConvertTo(context, destinationType) == true));
}
public override Object ConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, CultureInfo culture, Object value, Type destinationType)
{
if (destinationType == typeof(InstanceDescriptor))
{
Object objectFactory = value.GetType().GetField("_objectFactory", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).GetValue(value);
Object builtType = objectFactory.GetType().BaseType.GetField("_builtType", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).GetValue(objectFactory);
MethodInfo loadTemplate = typeof(TemplateTypeConverter).GetMethod("LoadTemplate");
return (new InstanceDescriptor(loadTemplate, new Object [] { "~/" + (builtType as Type).Name.Replace('_', '/').Replace("/ascx", ".ascx") }));
}
return base.ConvertTo(context, culture, value, destinationType);
}
public static ITemplate LoadTemplate(String virtualPath)
{
using (Page page = new Page())
{
return (page.LoadTemplate(virtualPath));
}
}
}
And, on your control:
public class MyControl: Control
{
[Browsable(false)]
[TypeConverter(typeof(TemplateTypeConverter))]
public ITemplate Template
{
get;
set;
}
}
This allows the following declaration:
Hope this helps!
SyntaxHighlighter.config.clipboardSwf = 'http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.0.320/scripts/clipboard.swf';
SyntaxHighlighter.brushes.CSharp.aliases = ['c#', 'c-sharp', 'csharp'];
SyntaxHighlighter.brushes.Xml.aliases = ['xml'];
SyntaxHighlighter.all();
