How can I dynamically access user control attributes?

Question

Im trying to create a "user control menu" where links to a page's usercontrols are placed at the top of the page. This will allow me to put several usercontrols on a page and allow the user to jump to that section of the page without scrolling so much. In order to do this, I put each usercontrol in a folder (usercontrols) and gave each control a Description property (<%@ Control Language="C#" Description = "Vehicles" .... %>).

My question is how can I access this description dynamically? I want to use this description as the link in my menu. So far, I have a foreach on my page that looks in the ControlCollection for a control that is of the ASP.usercontrols type. If it is I would assume that I could access its attributes and grab that description property. How can I do this? (Im also open to a better way to achieve my "user control menu", but maybe thats another question.) Should I use ((System.Web.UI.UserControl)mydynamiccontrol).Attributes.Keys?

Answer 1

you can iterate over the collection and do either a switch or a few if statements

I would suggst you have an interface or an abstract base class for all your user controls:

public abstract class MyBaseClass : UserControl
{
  public abstract string MyDescription {get;}
}

public MyUserControlA : MyBaseClass
{
  public string MyDescription {get {return "my description";}}
}

public MyUserControlB : MyBaseClass
{
  public string MyDescription {get {return "my other description";}}
}

Then you can loop over them as you do:

foreach ...
if (mydynamiccontrol is MyBaseClass)
{
    Response.Write(((MyBaseClass)mydynamiccontrol).MyDescription);
}

Hope this helps