Editing XML Documents with Dynamically Generated ASP.NET Pages

Programming ASP.NET pages as if they were (almost) Windows forms is a great feature - however, there are situations in which the layout of a form needs to vary significantly according to the data it receives to display. You have no idea about which or how many web controls are required until you receive the data. This is especially true when you need to show and edit data coming from an XML document rather than a database source. In this article, Enrico Sabbadin shows how you can get rid of the Visual Studio Web Forms designer and generate whole page layouts on the fly. Server controls (text boxes, data grids, bound columns, select columns, edit columns, and custom template columns) can be added and positioned while parsing the XML document to be edited. What's important is that you can do this while still preserving a compact and object-oriented programming style. Of course, you can still mix the two approaches - for example, you can develop a fixed, graphic-rich skeleton layout with the Web Form designer and then overlap the dynamically generated part. This approach will also give you a chance to better understand the inner working and activation sequence of an ASP.NET page.