I am attempting to make a website that can be edited online by the owner.  One of the settings is layout and I want to do this through masterpages.  The result of their choice is stored in an xml file called layout.xml.

I added this bit of code to the content page:

public class DynamicPage : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected override void OnPreInit(EventArgs e)
    {               
        SiteTools st = new SiteTools();
        string layout = st.getLayout(Request);
        if (!layout.Equals(string.Empty))
        {
            base.MasterPageFile = layout;
        }
        base.OnPreInit(e);
    }
}

here is the getLayout portion

public string getLayout(HttpRequest Request)
    {
        getPath(Request);
        try
        {
            xdoc.Load(_path + "\\config.xml");
            XmlNodeList layout = xdoc.GetElementsByTagName("layout");

            if (layout.Count > 0)
            {

                return layout[0].ChildNodes[0].InnerText;
            }
            return "";
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            if (ex.Message.Contains("Could not find a part of the path"))
            {

                return "XmlCreated";
            }
            return "Error: " + ex.Message;


        }
    }

  here is the layout content of config.xml

<theme><![CDATA[coffee]]></theme>
 <layout><![CDATA[~/masterpageb.master]]></layout>

when I try to access the edited page I get this error:

Content controls are allowed only in content page that references a master page.

[HttpException (0x80004005): Content controls are allowed only in content page that references a master page.]
   System.Web.UI.MasterPage.CreateMaster(TemplateControl owner, HttpContext context, VirtualPath masterPageFile, IDictionary contentTemplateCollection) +1116
   System.Web.UI.Page.get_Master() +49
   System.Web.UI.Page.ApplyMasterPage() +17
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1368

Any ideas? 

Thanks,

Bob 

The error you are getting indicates that a master page is not set.  My guess is that the call to getLayout is returning an empty string, and you don't have a default masterpage set in your page directive.  Can you try the getLayout method or run through it with the debugger to see what it is returning?

 where would I set the page directive?  This is probably my problem.....

The first line of your ASPX page is the page directive.  It begins with <%@ Page

Inside that tag, add: MasterPageFile="~/Default.master"  (Change the ~/Default.Master to the location of your default page.)

This will set a default master page that will be used if your call to getLayout comes back blank.

Okay, I had originally taken that line out. Thinking that it needed to be blank to be set by program...