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.