CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netcomments
Kyle Ryan
Kyle Ryan

Reputation: 4471

Can I place a comment inside a tag in ASP.NET?

I am looking to display this in my .aspx page, without using special character XML tags, can this be achieved?

<asp:ServerTag Property1="a"
    Property2="b"
    Property3="c" <%-- Comment why this particular property is necessary --%>
    Property4="d" />

However, I am greeted with the error message Server tags cannot contain <% ... %> constructs. If I use an HTML <!-- --> tag, I'm told the server tag is not well formed.

Is there any other syntax to make this possible?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 14113

Answers (3)

John K
John K

Reputation: 28869

Put server-side comment above your server-side control.

  • <!-- client-side comment (html) - appears in html source but not rendered on page
  • <%-- server-side comment - stripped out on server, never sees light of day, browser never knows about it

like this

<%-- Usage:
Property2 is xyz... 
Property3 will .. abc. Ignore Property  1 when this is set. etc
--%>
<asp:ServerTag Property1="a"
    Property2="b"
    Property3="c" 
    Property4="d" />

It's just like putting source code comments above your functions.
 

Think "server to server". It will make the difference between your HTML source looking like
cluttered with "pass through" html comment <!--:

<!-- Property usage: abc, def, ...xyz -->
Rendered server control contents.

vs. the cleaner stripped out " <%-- source:

Rendered server control contents.

Less bandwidth with latter too. No extraneous (and confusing to user) comments in HTML source.

Upvotes: 14

Dean Harding
Dean Harding

Reputation: 72658

It's not possible, no. The server tags need to be well-formed XML and you can't have tags like that in XML. You can put a comment at the top, of course, like so:

<!-- Property2 needed because... -->
<asp:ServerTag Property1="a" Property2="b" Property3="c" />

Upvotes: 10

Dested
Dested

Reputation: 6433

Not necessarily like that but you may want to consider decorating the property in c# to let the user know its relevance. After that something like resharper (or maybe vs) will give you this information when you try to set it.

Upvotes: 0

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