Vb6 “Tag” property equivalent in ASP.Net?

Question

I\'m looking for ideas and opinions here, not a \"real answer\", I guess...

Back in the old VB6 days, there was this property called \"Tag\" in all controls, that wa

Answer 1

I took mdb's brilliant solution, and ported it over to C# for my own needs. I also changed the Tags from a Dictionary of String, String, to a Dictionary of String, Object... since theoretically any type of object can be stored in the Session, not just strings:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;

public static class Extensions
{
    public static void SetTag(this Control ctl, object tagValue)
    {
        if (ctl.SessionTagDictionary().ContainsKey(TagName(ctl)))
            ctl.SessionTagDictionary()[TagName(ctl)] = tagValue;
        else
            ctl.SessionTagDictionary().Add(TagName(ctl), tagValue);
    }

    public static object GetTag(this Control ctl)
    {
        if (ctl.SessionTagDictionary().ContainsKey(TagName(ctl)))
            return ctl.SessionTagDictionary()[TagName(ctl)];
        else
            return string.Empty;
    }

    private static string TagName(Control ctl)
    {
        return ctl.Page.ClientID + "." + ctl.ClientID;
    }

    private static Dictionary SessionTagDictionary(this Control ctl)
    {
        Dictionary SessionTagDictionary;
        if (HttpContext.Current.Session["TagDictionary"] == null)
        {
            SessionTagDictionary = new Dictionary();
            HttpContext.Current.Session["TagDictionary"] = SessionTagDictionary;
        }
        else
            SessionTagDictionary = (Dictionary)HttpContext.Current.Session["TagDictionary"];
        return SessionTagDictionary;
    }
}