I have a simple user control to display a 'Product' and it needs the id of the product and the name of the product. I gave the control two public properties for that. If I put the user control in a Repeater I can use databinding syntax ProductName='<%# Eval("Name") %>'. If I write a foreach loop then inside the loop I can have a strongly typed reference to each Product. Is it possible to use the User Control inside a foreach loop and set the properties using the strongly typed object? I tried ProductName="<%= product.Name %>" but its not set to anything.

HI

 Try this

   ProductName="<%= Name %>"
 

That doesn't work, ProductName will still be emtpy.

<% foreach(Product p in ViewData.Products) { %> 

<uc:ProductDisplay ID="ProductDisplay1" runat="server" ProductName="<%= Product.Name %>" />

<% } %> 

How do you get anything from ViewData into the ProductName attribute? The above doesn't work, and neither does <%# product.Name %> ("The name 'product' does not exist in the current context")

Hi, yes, if you don't want to use the DataBinding method, you can use MVCToolkit's RenderUserControl method.  The code would be like this:

<% foreach(Product prod in ViewData.ProductCollection) { %>
	<%= Html.RenderUserControl("~/Path/ProductControl.ascx", null, new { ProductID = prod.ProductID, ProductName = prod.ProductName })%>
<% } %>

The second parameter to RenderUserControl lets you supply ViewData, and the third lets you initialize its public properties.

Have you tried  

<%= p.Name %>

(Product.Name is a static field/property on the Product type). 

random0xff:

How do you get anything from ViewData into the ProductName attribute? The above doesn't work, and neither does <%# product.Name %> ("The name 'product' does not exist in the current context")

You could use the CodeExpressionBuilder found here to do this. This way you could write:

<uc:ProductDisplay ID="ProductDisplay1" runat="server" ProductName="<%$ code: p.Name %>" />

This is the approach that I've been using with my existing server controls.

 The problem here is that your code is using "Product.Name" which is not defined - your loop is using the instance "p" so you need "p.ProductName" - that's how you'd do it with your code.

You can also do this in the UserControl itself if you use the MVC Toolkit:

<%=Html.RenderUserControl("MyProductDisplay.ascx")%>

If you declare "MyProductDisplay.ascx" as a ViewUserControl<Product> (assuming your view is a ViewPage<Product>) - they will "auto share" the ViewData so that in the user control you can access ViewData.

You can also explicitly set the data on a UserControl:

<%=Html.RenderUserControl("MyProductDisplay",ViewData.Product)%>

This is a nice option if you don't want to share ViewData.

It's Christmas Eve and Santa is on the roof...
 

Thanks for this tips. It is very helpful.