Hi Folks

I have a master page which inherits my own base class : "public class common", in common.vb, and the common class Inherits System.Web.UI.MasterPage. Common creates a couple of extra public props, variables etc which can be utilised from the master page.

Now thats working great. The extra properties and backend server connection in the common class are accessible from the master page and, with the help of the MasterType directive, are also accessible from the child aspx page.

But to make this even better I wanted to change each child page to be based on a "base class" so the server variables on the Master page are available without putting code on each child page. So I created a base class "public class commonpage", which inherits System.Web.UI.Page. BUT the problem is that this class does not recognise the additional props and variables exposed in the master page. What do I need to inherit to make the extra props and variabels in common.vb accessible to the child page ?

In essence I think I'm asking the same questions as : "what does the @mastertype directive do behind the scenes?"

 thanks

The only real way to implement what you're talking about is creating properites as such on your custom Page class (please excuse the C# syntax, I can't write VB without intelisense)

public string MyStringProp
{
 get
 {
  MyCustomMaster objMaster = (MyCustomMaster)this.MasterPage;
  return objMaster.MyStringProp;
 }
}

Hope that helps.

I just made a Blog post about this type of use, Handling Master Page Button Control on the Content Page. It sounds like you need to make your properties public on your master page class. Second you have to cast the reference to your master page explicitly:

VB 

C# 

Once you do this any of the public members in your master page class, either in your base master page class or the child class (the one in the actual code-behind) will be available.