ASP.NET Web UI - Code Generation, Dyanamic Data, Custom Controls?

Question

So the bottom line is that we are working on a large web based project in ASP.NET webforms that is extremely heavy on data editing operations and we are not getting the code reuse that we want out of the presentation layer. We are currently generating a good portion of our DAL and that works great. However, the strategies for standardizing, improving UI development time, and code reuse for the presentation layer are less clear. I have been researching DyanamicData, potential code generation, and writing our own custom controls, but i dont see an obvious place to focus our efforts. Any strong feelings on these directions?

Thanks, Matt

Answer 1

I have been doing ASP.NET development for several years... and I have yet to see any sort of tool that takes the hassle out of UI work in the same way that code-generation tools can make short work of the DAL. Personally, I don't even use the Visual Studio designer view. Every app is different... and has different UI requirements.

I do have a general rule for doing webforms though... (but it also applies to programming in general, and you probably already use something similar) If I need to do a UI task twice... I cut and paste the code. If I need to do it a third time, it goes into a UserControl.

Are you new to ASP.NET? If so, know that UserControls are your friend... it is the go-to method for presentation layer re-use in ASP.NET. CustomControls are a trickier beast.