WebForms Automatic Generation Using Reflection (1)

Introduction

This is the first of a series of articles about code generation of Web Forms.

The idea is very simple. For the following class:

enum ArticleRating
{
   Bad, Good, Excelent
}
class Feedback 
{
    public string Name;
    public string Email;
    public string Comments;
    public ArticleRating Rating;
}

we want the following Web Form to be generated:

<TABLE><TBODY>
<TR><TD>Name:</TD><TD><INPUT id="name"></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Email:</TD><TD><INPUT id="email"></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Comments:</TD><TD><input id="comments"></input></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Ratings:</TD><TD><SELECT id="ratings">
<OPTION selected value="0">Bad</OPTION>
<OPTION value="1">Good</OPTION>
<OPTION value="2">Excellent</OPTION>
</SELECT>
</TD>
</TR>
</TBODY></TABLE>

How can we do this?

There are two ways of doing this:

Using Serialization, you can serialize this class and use XSLT for formatting, or just play with the DOM generated.
Using Reflection, to explore the class members and infer the type of control to generate.

I prefer to use Reflection because I can add flexibility to it. For example:

[FormControl(Type="RadioGroup")] 
enum ArticleRating { Bad, Good, Excelent } 
[Form(Submit="OK",Clear="Clear",Action="dofeedback.aspx")] 
class Feedback 
{ 
   public string Name; 
   public string Email; 
   [FormControl(Type="TextArea", 
         Caption="Please Write Your Comments", 
         CaptionPosition="Over")] 
   public string Comments; 
   public ArticleRating Rating; 
}

This will generate the following form:

<TABLE><TBODY>
<TR><TD>Name:</TD><TD><INPUT id="name"></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Email:</TD><TD><INPUT id="email"></TD></TR>
<TR><TD colspan="2">Please Write Your Comments:</TD></TR>
<TD><textarea id="comments"></textarea></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Ratings:</TD><TD>
<input type="radio" value="0">Bad</input>
<input type="radio" value="0">Good</input>
<input type="radio" value="0">Excelent</input>
</TD>
</TR>
</TBODY></TABLE>

That's the idea....

I request you to read the second part of this series.

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