Why <%= %> works in one situation but not in another

Question

This is stemming from a bad answer I gave last night. The curiosity as to why one method works and not the other is bugging me and I\'m hoping someone smarter than me can g

Answer 1

Using <%= %> is equal to putting Response.Write("") in your page. When doing this:

<%= GetMyText("LabelText") %>

The ASP.NET processor evaluates the control, then when rendering, it outputs the control's contents & calls Response.Write where it sees <%=.

In this example:

You can't use Response.Write("") on a Text attribute because it does not return a string. It writes its output to the response buffer and returns void.

If you want to use the server tag syntax in ASP.NET markup you need to use <%# %>. This combination of markup data binds the value in the tags. To make this work, you'll then need to call DataBind() in your page's Load() method for it to work.