Accessing Formview controls Dynamically ASP.Net code behind file

Ever tried to access the formview controls programmatically?Well I did and had to spend quite sometime to figure out because I am no expert in ASP.net.
The requirement was to loop or iterate through all the controls on the page and set some of the properties of the controls dynamically.Since I wanted to do this before I could tie or bind the data in Page_Load I put the code in Page_Init. To add to my woes the technology chosen for the middle tier does not allow me to step through and I have been using logging tool send the values and manually check.
foreach(Control ctrl in this.Page.Controls)
{
//Do something
}
The above code does not work for formview because the formview controls are not instanstiated till data is bound to it unless the default mode is insert mode.So in order to access the formview controls loop through formview controls after the data is bound to the controls i.e after Page_Load.Page_PreRender is a better option compared to Page_Init.

protected void Page_PreRender(object sender,EventArgs e)
{
foreach(Control ctrl in this.Page.Controls)
{
if(ctrl.GetType().ToString() == "FormView")
foreach(Control fctrl in ctrl.Controls)
{
//Do Something
}
}
}

Multiple Lines in a Label Control

Recently when I was designing an ASP.Net form I came across a strange requirement where in static text had to be displayed in multiple lines. When I looked at it looked really simple.Just have as many Label controls as the number of lines.

But then I did not want to waste multiple controls.Well...err..I tried something silly and trivial and it served the purpose.

Lets say "This is the sample text I want to display in a Label on an ASP.Net form in a project" and I want this to be displayed in multiple lines.

The silly method goes like this.


Drag and drop a Label on to the ASP.net form.
Choose the Text property for the Label in the Designer.
This is the sample text <(br)>I want to display in a Label <(br)> on an ASP.Net form in a project.
Note: Remove the brackets ( and ) which will result in adding a line break to the text.


When the page renders the label will display the above text as below



This is the sample text
I want to display in a Label
on an ASP.Net form in a project.

Shift + Delete

One of the most useful shortcuts that I use frequently is the Shift + Delete to delete a line.Often as a programmer I found it really annoying to delete the lines using either Backspace or Delete iteself, sometimes just to clear out the commented code or to clear out the extra lines in a program.
Shift + Delete allows to delete a line,empty line and with the up,down arrow keys it can be used to delete multiple lines.
Another useful shortcut used to delete an entire word is Shift + Control + Delete in combination with the arrow keys.

Browsers Back button capability in ASP.Net forms

Today I ran into a problem of creating a back button capability to one of my ASP.Net form and as usual as every newbie programmer I searched for code snippets,solutions over google. I did find some reference to this issue and the code cited did not meet my requirement COMPLETELY and I had to figure it out myself.Heres what I came up with

I have a server control Button on my form and on click I wanted to go back to the page from where the request came.

private static string previousPageURL = String.Empty;

protected void Page_Load(object sender,EventArgs e)
{
if(!IsPostback)
previousPageURL = this.Request.Urireferer.AbsoluteUri;

}
protected void BackButton_Click(object sender,EventArgs e)
{
Response.Redirect(previousPageURL);
}

The issue was that without the static keyword the string variable previousPageURL was being initialized to "" eventhough during the first page load it got the right URL of the previous page.
Using Hyperlinks or Linkbutton would have been a better choice since the NavigateUrl property could be automatically assigned the URL when the page first loads.If you use a button and if the suggested method in the various articles,blogs does not work check whether the variable's value is being overwritten.

Hope it helps.

Enumerating SQL Instances in a local network

When I started working on a versioning tool for SQL server databases, I wanted to list all the SQL server instances in the local network. After much searching and testing, I came up with this code snippet below. Apparently the .Net framework already has a class that can do the job for you. There are various ways on doing these and if you search with the title of the blog on google you will definitly get quite a few.I will keep it simple and small.For more information search on the classname SqlDataSourceEnumerator in msdn.


try
{
SqlDataSourceEnumerator Sqlen = SqlDataSourceEnumerator.Instance;
DataTable dt = Sqlen.GetDataSources();
foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows)
{
ServercomboBox.Items.Add(row[0]);
}
}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show("Server lists could not be loaded");
}

Hope that helps