I have a user control that I want to be able to plug into a variety of web applications.  All of the applications have the same UI  and code.  The UI is a repeater with a hyperlink and a div:

 <asp:repeater id="MyItems" runat="server">
<itemtemplate>
<h2><a id="title" href="\wa\home\details.aspx" runat="server"></a></h2>
<div id="summary" runat="server"></div>
</itemtemplate>
</asp:repeater>

 We simply fill the repeater with data from a database and do the databinding in the code behind.

I was thinking I would create a custom control so I could easily plug this into all of the different sites using it, but I am not experienced with this.  Is there a way for me to create a custom repeater control that would include the UI and databinding? 

Is there a better way to achieve this? For instance, should I just create a web project with this user control and reference this in the web applications that need to utilize the user control? (This really seems more like a hack than a solution.  My preference is to create something with the UI and code that I can just plug in the pages.

Your feedback is appreciated.

JM
 

Hi:

  To test, you can first write code below in the same project of your web site:

    public class RepeaterTemplate : ITemplate
    {
        public RepeaterTemplate()
        {
        }

        //A variable to hold the type of ListItemType.
        ListItemType _templateType;

        //Constructor where we define the template type and column name.
        public RepeaterTemplate(ListItemType type)
        {
            //Stores the template type.
            _templateType = type;
        }
        void ITemplate.InstantiateIn(System.Web.UI.Control container)
        {
            switch (_templateType)
            {
                case ListItemType.Item:
                    Literal l = new Literal();
                    l.Text = @"<h2><a id='title' href='\wa\home\details.aspx' runat='server'>Hello</a></h2>
<div id='summary' runat='server'>It's invisible if here's no text so I added it</div>";
                    container.Controls.Add(l);
                    break;
            }
        }
    }
  public class CustomRepeater:Repeater
    {
        protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnInit(e);
            this.ItemTemplate = new RepeaterTemplate(ListItemType.Item);
        }
    }

  protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    { 
        CustomRepeater r = new CustomRepeater();
        this.form1.Controls.Add(r);
        r.DataSourceID = "SqlDataSource1";
        r.DataBind();
 
    }

If code above works, you can put these code(bold one) into a ClassLibrary project and build a .dll. Then in each project you can simply add a reference from this dll file and use it as mentioned above.

If it doesn't work, please inform us.

Regards