I was doing some work the other day, and found that I had the need to implement a template programatically (rather than creating it at design time). I love the internet search engines, and the (sometimes overwhelming) amount of information you can usually find on any subject, but there wasn't a whole lot on this subject. To make matters worse, the articles I did find hinted around the edges of what I was looking for, but none seemed to describe what I needed to do very closely - they all addressed the aspect of the problem that they were interested in solving. So, at the risk of introducing one more post that addresses the issue that I was trying to solve, perhaps this post will help you.

The basic idea behind using a template is that you can place controls into it that are bound to data at run-time. In a very general sense, that's what a grid control does - you provide a list of columns you're interested in, hook the grid up to a datasource, issue a databind command, and the data gets displayed where you want it to be. The next step is to take your own asp.net controls of choice and put them into the itemtemplate or edittemplate for a column. If you know what column you're binding to at run-time, the task is fairly straightforward, and we've all done it countless times.

The problem I was trying to solve was that I had a control (the radRotator control by telerik) that I needed to place an unknown number of copies (at design time) onto a web page, each of which would dind to a differently-named column in the data table it was attaching to. Yes, I probably could have created a bunch of different controls, and altered the "visible" property, but that wasn't how I wanted to skin this cat. Doing it the way I wanted to, however, required that I instantiate the controls dynamically at run time, and populate the control's template with the controls I wanted to use in the display, which would themselves bind to data columns that varied from instance to instance.

The first step is to create a helper class that creates your template. The template in this case is a very simple one, containing only a label control which will take as its text the name of a color, and change the background color of the label to that same color. The class looks like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

class RotatorTemplate : ITemplate { string columnName; public RotatorTemplate(string column) { columnName = column; } public void InstantiateIn(Control c) { Label lbl = new Label(); lbl.DataBinding += new EventHandler(OnDisplayDataBinding); c.Controls.Add(lbl); } void OnDisplayDataBinding(object sender, EventArgs e) { Label lbl = (Label)sender; RadRotatorFrame iContainer = (RadRotatorFrame)lbl.NamingContainer; DataRowView drv = ((DataRowView) iContainer.DataItem); lbl.Text = drv[columnName].ToString(); lbl.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromName(lbl.Text); } }

What's going on here is that when the constructor is called, the name of the column that we're going to bind to is passed in to the constructor, and stored in the local variable "columnName" at line 6. The InstantiateIn method is called by the control wrapping the template each time it needs a new copy of the template contents. In our example, we create a new label, hook up the OnDisplayDataBinding event handler. Note that there's no magic in the name internal to the helper class - I named it that because it's descriptive of what the routine does. The only important piece here is that the "lbl.DataBinding" event be specified properly. You should also realize that you could create and add any number of controls of different types here, you're not limited to a single control. Finally, we add the control to the controls collection of whatever control requested the new template instance.

The most interesting part is the event handler. I don't see how this helper class can avoid having a lot of knowledge about the environment it's working in, because of the code on line 17 that typecasts the naming container to be of type RadRotatorFrame - though I suspect that the RotatorFrame descends from a more generic class that still has  a dataitem property; in any event, this solved my immediate problem, I'll look for the generic class later, and you should just be aware that you'd substitute your own naming container in the typecast.

The real breakthrough for me was the realization that the DataItem was available to be cast into a dataRowView, which I could then extract the desired data from, and set the text of the control. Because I was writing this for a very specific application, I knew I'd always be getting a color name, so I also took the opportunity to set the label's background color. As a general rule, you'd want to do better data checking before making the assignment on line 20, though it turns out that an attempt to convert a non-color into a color fails gracefully, and returns white.. Also, if you're adding more that one control in the InstantiateIn event, you'll want to name them when you create them, so that you can find them in the databinding event.

That's the helper class. After that, the rest of the process is trivial. As an example, say you wanted to hook up a table that contains proverbs. You could do it like this (and here, I'm populating the template of a radRotator control, but the containing control could be anything that would take a template):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { DataTable proverbsTable = new DataTable(); proverbsTable.Columns.Add("proverb"); proverbsTable.Rows.Add("A stitch in time saves nine"); proverbsTable.Rows.Add("A rolling stone gathers no moss"); proverbsTable.Rows.Add("The early bird catches the worm"); proverbsTable.Rows.Add("A penny saved is virtually worthless"); RadRotator rotator1 = new RadRotator(); rotator1.ID = "rotator1"; rotator1.DataSource = proverbsTable; rotator1.FrameTemplate = new RotatorTemplate("proverb"); rotator1.TransitionType = RadRotator.RotatorTransitionType.Slideshow; rotator1.TransitionEffect = RadRotator.RotatorTransitionEffect.GradientWipe; rotator1.Width = 500; rotator1.Height = 50; rotator1.AutoPostBack = true; PlaceHolder1.Controls.Add(rotator1); rotator1.DataBind(); }

The only really interesting thing here is the creation of the RotatorTemplate on line 12 - here's where you pass the variable information (in this case, the name of the data column you're going to use to populate the label text).

That's it for ITemplate Instantiation. I hope it saves you some time and sheds a little light on your own problem.