Control Customization via XML

[michael_jhons]

Hi everybody, i'm currently developping a website using 3 tier architecture, i've been requested that the controls of the presentation layer should be loaded and customized via an XML file. To behonest i'm new to XML and I made some researches and i didn't succeeded. Could anyone help me with this either by providing an example or some document? shold i use teh web.config file? thank you in advance for your usual help

[Estys]

I assumed you referred to ASP.NET controls (you mentioned web.config) : Dynamic ASPNET Controls using XML

[michael_jhons]

thank you for your answer, is there any other way without using the XSLT file ?

[Estys]

Sure, you could write the parsing and interpreting of the XML yourself (C# whatever) and incorporate it in your application. However XSLT is specific to XML input so it's a natural candidate if you want to generate HTML on the fly. The example I sent you uses a pattern. If your pages do not exhibit such patterns it will become harder to customize using XML.

michael_jhons wrote:

the controls of the presentation layer should be loaded and customized via an XML file

That's kind of an unbounded requirement. What must be customized?? Position? Colour? Size? Maybe just stylesheets will do the trick for you. Dependent on the actual requirements you can make a choice how your solution will look like.

[michael_jhons]

thank you for your help, i'll give it a try

[Estys]

As an afterthought, did they/you perhaps mean XAML? Then your UI would be based on SL.

modified on Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:58 PM

[michael_jhons]

requesters only mentioned XML, but of course i can use any methode that lead to a successful result thanks

[michael_jhons]

Dear Estys, i just finished applying the method you provided, i faced a little problem, it's while i'm loading,i'm also populating the radioButtonlist from a datatble, the RadiobuttonList is created using the xslt file,so an error is shoing to all using controls in the Default.aspx.cs file is "the name 'control's ID' does not exist in the current context" so how could i use controls in this context? thank you again for your help.