How can you move ASP.Net controls to different places on the Web form at runtime?

Question

Is there an accepted way to \"move\" a control.

My client wants to place a certain chunk of markup (representing some visual element) in one of several different pla

Answer 1

I'd recommend using a placeholder control, moving your markup into a separate user control, then loading this at runtime and adding it to the relevant placeholder.

Eg.

// Load a user control
MyControl userCtrl = (MyControl) LoadControl("~/Controls/MyControl.ascx");

// Or create an instance of your control
SubclassedControl subclassedCtrl = new SubclassedControl();

// Do stuff with controls here
userCtrl.LoadData();
subclassedCtrl.Text = "Hello World";

// Check which placeholder to add controls to
PlaceHolder placeHolder = (foo=="bar") ? placeHolder1 : placeHolder2;

// Add the controls
placeHolder.Controls.Add(userCtrl);
placeHolder.Controls.Add(subclassedCtrl);

This will avoid cluttering up your page with unnecessary markup, and loading it at runtime will also avoid unnecessary confusion later, when another developer looks at the code and can't immediately see why a control is in one place in the markup, but renders on a completely different part of the page.