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Giving Identity To Each Page In ASP.NET 2.0

In this tutorial I will explain a way of identifying the page other than using URL. There may be many benefits to identify the page but one important real time scenario that is coming in my mind is creating menu based on pages.

You can of course identify the page using URL but I think there is a major issue this approach has. Let us consider a scenario in which you are creating a page with a name RegistrationPage.aspx and after 3 weeks your senior will come and say that the name of the page should be SignUp.aspx so here your approach will fail and you will end up changing code.

In this tutorial I will explain the way of giving identity to each page, but I will not explain how to create menus. As you are reading this article so I assume that reader should be familiar with master pages and have hands on experience in creating web application in .Net.

Before doing coding it is important to create the project and add the files that are required to demonstrate this approach.

First of all create a website and name them say "WebSite1".
Add 2 pages Default1.aspx and Default2.aspx in the project.
Make the pages added above as content pages i.e. add a property MasterPageFile in the page directives of both files and add in both the pages.

If you are familiar with the master page then you won’t face any problem in doing that. Now we are ready with the resources.

Let us consider a scenario in which you have 2 conditions i.e. either menus are populated for Admin or for a non admin user. So here I am creating an enum for this.

public enum MenuType { 
    Admin, 
    NonAdmin 
}

You can create this enum in the master page as well as in the separate file, but here I am creating this enum in the master page.

Create a property in the master page of type MenuType

private MenuType _MenuObject; 
public MenuType MenuObject { 
    get { 
        return _MenuObject; 
    } 
    set { 
        _MenuObject = value; 
    } 
}

Now add following code in the page load event of Default1.aspx

if (!IsPostBack) {   
    ((MasterPage) Page.Master).MenuObject = MasterPage.MenuType.NonAdmin; 
}

And following in the page load event of Default2.aspx

if (!IsPostBack) {   
    ((MasterPage) Page.Master).MenuObject = MasterPage.MenuType.Admin; 
}

Now come back to master page and add following code in the page load event of master page.

if (_MenuObject == MenuType.Admin) { 
    // Create a menu for Admin 
} 
else if (_MenuObject == MenuType.NonAdmin) { 
    // Create a menu for Non Admin 
}

Now run the program. If you are on Default1.aspx then the value of MenuObject property is NonAdmin so the menu for non admin will be rendered in the page and vice versa.

So in the future if the name of the file changes then also you need not to change the code and identity of the page will remain intact.

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Thursday, December 23, 2010

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