Creating a lot of .aspx pages to add data to various tables. Is there a better way?

Question

I'm working on a CRUD site with a lot of very similar forms for adding new data. In other words:

AddMovie.aspx, AddGame.aspx, AddBeer.aspx, AddAdd.aspx

I keep thinking to myself, "Self, it would be really nice to have a single Add.aspx instead of re-writing so many similar pages - plus all those OOP nerds would think I'm cool since I'm re-using instead of copy/pasting!"

So assuming I'm on the right track, if I were to go with the single Add.aspx page, how could I represent all sets of fields for each object? I thought about a bunch of panels or divs that I could hide/show, but not sure I really like that solution. Is there a better way to do it or should I just give up and go back to the multiple bad ol' Add*Object*.aspx pages?

Also, this is a plain ol' (3.5) web forms app. No ASP.NET MVC goodness for this one, sadly. It seems like there should be such a trivial solution and that I'm just over-thinking things, but I can't come up with one and so I turn to Stack Overflow. :)

Answer 1

A better way would perhaps be to have a single page called Add.aspx and then based on the querystring you send it (i.e. Add.asps?type=game) you could customize the form and the logic for the particular type of object your are trying to work with.

Answer 2

Maybe you should look at ASP.NET dynamic data or the subsonic project. Both allow to build CRUD-type website very fast because they support "scaffolding" (the edit pages are generated automatically based on your database model).

Answer 3

Another option is to subclass Page, and then make your pages inherit from it, so you've got one place with all common functionality.

For example:

public abstract class BasePage<T> : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected T GetObjectById(int objectId)
    {
        // return new T();
    }
    protected void SaveObject(T obj)
    {
        // Save object to DB here
    }
    protected void DeleteObjectById(int objectId)
    {
        // Delete object
    }

    protected abstract void PopulateUI(T obj);

    protected override void OnLoad(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (!Page.IsPostBack)
        {
            int objectId = Convert.ToInt32(Request.QueryString.Get("id"));
            T obj = GetObjectById(objectId);
            PopulateUI(obj);
        }
    }
}

Your pages would then inherit from this:

public class AddGame : BasePage<Game>
{
    protected override void PopulateUI(Game game)
    {
        // Populate the UI with game information

        GameNameTextBox.Text = game.Name;
        PublisherNameTextBox.Text = game.Publisher.Name;

        // etc
    }
}

This should make creating the pages much quicker and easier, and gives you a bit more control over how data is retrieved and saved.