Best way to encapsulate component that includes logic and webforms

Question

I have written a data browsing library that is being used in several projects. The library or component includes some classes as well as some ASPX pages.

Until now, we copy all the files into each project to reuse it, with the obvious drawbacks and updating nightmares. I want to encapsulate all the library into a component that the projects can use.

What's the best way to do it? I know I can create a DLL, but I think it's only for the classes, don't know how to go with the ASPXs pages.

We are using Visual Studio 2008 and Framework 2.0

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

This is a perfect case for custom controls.

Change the pages into user controls, and embed the new user controls back into pages that have nothing in them but the reference to the user control.

Once that works, you can change the user controls into server controls, little by little. They will be composite controls, as the user control already is.

There's a trick you can use at this stage: I'm not recalling the details this late at night, but someone else will fill those in: when ASP.NET compiles a page, it first "compiles" the markup into source code, then compiles the source code. You can get ASP.NET to not delete the temporary source files. That allows you to copy into your project code that creates precisely the same HTML as the user control did.

The difference will be - it's now your code and you can refactor it as much as you like, or even include it in a custom control library.