How do you pass a another control into a user-created ASP.NET control as a parameter in its decleration using the ID of the other control?

Question

I'm trying to create a control (MyControl) which does things to other controls on the page it's on. It has a property:

public property System.Web.UI.Control SomeOtherControl;

I want to be able to set this property from the ASPX page that uses the control. Right now, the only way I can do it is in the Page_Load of the code-behind:

MyControl.SomeOtherControl = TheOtherControl;

Instead of having to do this on the code-behind of every page that uses MyControl, I want do just do this on the ASPX page:

<xyz:MyControl SomeOtherControl="TheOtherControlsID" />

In order to do this I tried using the Page.FindControl() method on the ID string to find the referenced control when MyControl initializes, but it only searches the page's top-level controls. I could write my own recursive FindControl(), but I figure there must be a better way to do this, and I'm worried about the performance of something like that. Any ideas?

Answer 1

A recursive FindControl is probably a lot faster then you might believe. I've never even been able to measure a millisecond worth of different in processing time, even with hundreds of controls.