Accessing objects from other classes in ASP.NET (VB)

Question

Please forgive the newb question. I am very new to .NET so don't assume I've done something basic.

In ASP.NET I have a form that has a Textbox named txtOutput and a button. In the main file.aspx.vb I can call a function from the button handler and in that function I can have

txtOutput.Text = "Some Message"

with no problem. I have a bunch of functions in several other classes. For instance I have a class named AbleCommerce that does some database functions. These functions are called from my main class. In those functions, however, I have no visibility of txtOutput. All of my classes are, unfortunately, in the default namespace which I understand is not optimal but didn't seem to impact this issue.

I know this is an easy one I've just not understood properly but it has me stumped. My gut says that I probably need to pass the Textbox object to my "other class" but can't for the life of me figure how.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Instead of passing ASP.NET server controls to your DAL classes pass only the values they need like for example the text that has been entered in a textbox:

Dim username As String = edtUser.Text
Dim c As New AbleCommerce()
c.SomeFunction(username)

Answer 2

The normal way is something like this:

MyTextBox.Text = MyDBClass.GetName(userID)

That is, you have classes that don't know about the UI, and a codebehind that takes values from the classes and assigns them to UI widgets.