ansaurus

Question

Is Adding runat="server" to HTML tags to get relative path in ASP.net an elegant solution?

Answer 1

+4 A:

Be careful though because every element that has runat="server" will be 'serialized' and stored in the ViewState every time a PostBack occurs, and you don't wanna be cluttering it up with useless data.

Andreas Grech 2008-12-30 12:27:08

What if I turn viewstate off? I don't need in most of the pages.

Cyril Gupta 2008-12-30 12:41:37

But then again... I won't know whether I need it till users have a problem.

Cyril Gupta 2008-12-30 12:42:07

You can (and should) turn off viewstate in individual controls that you do not need to track viewstate on.

Per Hornshøj-Schierbeck 2008-12-30 12:50:17

Answer 2

+5 A:

You should use a base tag to define the root of your application and make all links relative like this :

<head>
    <base href="<%= Request.ApplicationPath %>" />
</head>
...
<a href="daily/panchang/"></a> <!-- this now points to ~/daily/panchang/ -->

Diadistis 2008-12-30 12:33:36

But be aware that now ALL your links are relative to the base path...

splattne 2008-12-30 12:38:01

:) There's a caveat to everything. Though I like this solution

Cyril Gupta 2008-12-30 12:40:17

Yes that's true, but in any good design that should be the case :)

Diadistis 2008-12-30 12:40:21

I also think, it's a good solution. I just wanted to you check if there are some common header/footer controls/classes which are "not ready" for that solution.

splattne 2008-12-30 12:44:19

It's probably the best you can do :)

Per Hornshøj-Schierbeck 2008-12-30 12:52:00

yech, base tags are such a code smell, this is unlikely to be pretty

annakata 2008-12-30 12:59:23

Well, it failed miserably when I tried to implement it. My ASP.Net Ajax won't work and the error I got is totally mysterious!

Cyril Gupta 2008-12-30 15:28:37

Answer 3

+6 A:

I won't say whether it's an elegant solution, I'll just point out an alterantive within System.Web:

<a href="<%= VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/daily/panchang/") %>">

Cristian Libardo 2008-12-30 12:34:14

That doesn't look as if it does anything different than what I wrote, and looks harder to read. Is it more efficient?

Cyril Gupta 2008-12-30 12:37:24

It's actually rather different. The one with runat server will create a HtmlGenericControl and add it to the control hierarchy. This will create a LiteralControl with the computed string.

Cristian Libardo 2008-12-30 12:46:59

I wouldn't worry about efficiency. This might be more efficient but it's probably irrelevant. Just know the alternative and write as clean code as possible.

Cristian Libardo 2008-12-30 12:50:30

I agree with Cristian - this is much better than your own initial solution - you also avoid the whole viewstate problem.

Per Hornshøj-Schierbeck 2008-12-30 12:51:18

I added the EnableViewState="False" to my initial solution and got what's needed. I think it's cleaner to read too. What say?

Cyril Gupta 2008-12-31 08:02:39

I say go for it. I don't think the enableviewstate will do any difference unless you set the href in page load. ASP.NET doesn't usually store viewstate for attributes set before "begin tracking viewstate" which happens sometime before load.

Cristian Libardo 2009-01-01 22:02:19

Is mixing code in with the html a good idea? I feel that the code behind was meant to get rid of that.

jjnguy 2009-05-22 14:17:12

The html generated with runat looks exactly like you would want to be in the page.

jjnguy 2009-05-22 14:18:02

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

Is Adding runat="server" to HTML tags to get relative path in ASP.net an elegant solution?

related questions