So I have a custom usercontrol that serves as the template for a page, and all parsed content and dynamically added content is added to the usercontrol as a child control. The usercontrol must be in a subdirectory. Unfortunately, all webcontrols resolve urls from the template directory and so mylink.navigateurl = "default.aspx" would be rendered as "templates/default.aspx". Turns out that url is manipulated with ResolveUrl before beinng rendered. ResolveUrl cannot be overriden, but is based on the TemplateSourceProperty which CAN be overridden. So to work around this problem, I attempted to override the public property TemplateSourceDirectory as so:

Public Class PageTemplate
Inherits UserControl

Overrides ReadOnly Property TemplateSourceDirectory as String
Get
Return ""
End Get
End Property


End Class

I noticed some real funny behavior when I did this. I added the appropriate inherits attribute into the control directive for it to be loaded as the PageTemplate type.
Response.Write(Me.TemplateSourceDirectory) produced:
/templates

Response.Write(CType(Me, CrazyWeb.PageTemplate).TemplateSourceDirectory) produced:
/templates

However,
Response.Write(New CrazyWeb.PageTemplate().TemplateSourceDirectory) produced:
\
(which is correct)

Now I did some poking around with ildasm.exe in the system.web dll and while I'm really not very good at reading the native code, I think the problem stems from the loadcontrol method initializing it as a usercontrol, rather than its derived type. Does anyone know of any workarounds for this problem? I know I can't be the only person that doesn't want urls resolved relative to the template directory in their usercontrol.

Hi,

From what you're describing it sounds like you're doing about the same that the Master Pages technique does. Take a look at its source code and note how the Content class overrides TemplateSourceDirectory. Also note how in ContentContainer::OnInit method the TemplateSourceDirectory of each content is set to be the one from the Page instead of the usercontrol defining the template.

---

Victor Garcia Aprea
Microsoft MVP | ASP.NET

Looking for insights on ASP.NET?, read my blog: Followers of the IHttpHandler !!

Akinc5000,

Did you ever figure out a solution to your problem? I am in the same boat as you and have spent several hours trying to figuring out a solution! If you did, I would love to hear from you.

I have not checked out the master pasges sample mentioned above -- this is what I am going to do next.

Thanks.