CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net
Mighty Z
Mighty Z

Reputation: 35

Referencing other ASP.NET pages symbolically, with compile-time checks?

I'm noticing code accumulating in my project that looks like this:

Response.Redirect("/Foo/Bar.aspx");

This seems brittle -- if I move or rename Bar.aspx file, I need to find places where I've referenced it and correct those string constants, both in markup and codebehind. It seems like their should be a better way. Something like:

Response.Redirect( MyNamespace.BarPage.GetUrl() );

In other words, let the 'stack' figure out the URL I need. Note: I know that I can consolidate references to a particular page with a hand-coded BarPage.GetUrl() method, but even that seems failure-prone.

Isn't there a better way?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 70

Answers (4)

RickNZ
RickNZ

Reputation: 18654

Redirects in general are fragile, no matter how you get the name of the next page. They are also a performance problem.

If you find them collecting in your system, the first question you should really ask is why: excessive redirects are almost always a sign of an architectural problem.

Upvotes: 0

fyjham
fyjham

Reputation: 7034

The problem you'll face is that there's no real inherent link between a code-behind and it's code-infront except the <%@Page %> directive. There's no real reason a codebehind has to even have the same class name as the code-infront's file name, it only happens because it's convention and it's how the auto-generator lays it out.

This means you're not going to find anything you can reference at compile-time that even knows what aspx the .cs links to. The closest thing you'll find is the typeof(MyNamespace.BarPage).FullName which will give you the code-behind's name and by assuming things follow convention you could (but I don't recommend) construct the URL for the code infront page it's associated with.

Personally I think you're better off just doing a find-all for "barPage.aspx" when you rename it and doing a little refactoring. You'll have to deal with hyperlinks in the code-infront anyway. If barPage.aspx represents some abstract concept (Like "The login page") it may help to add a property for it, but if barpage is just another page with no real globally inherent meaning I'd leave it as-is.

Upvotes: 1

womp
womp

Reputation: 116987

The best way would be to resource them. Add a meaningful key and the URL value to the resource file, and redirect that way.

Response.Redirect(Properties.ASPXUrls.FooBar);

Upvotes: 2

jchapa
jchapa

Reputation: 3996

I'd recommend creating a static class with different properties for each of the links. That way, you only have one place to update.

Upvotes: 0

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