This wasn’t intended to be a two-part article. It was just after I published the original article, I noticed that I’d left out a large part of ViewComponentEx. We continue…..
protected bool RenderOptionalSection(string section)
protected bool RenderOptionalSection(string section, string defaultText)
Renders the named section of a block component - if the section is present. If not, it just silently returns. The second overload lets you provide some text to be rendered, if that section isn’t given:
RenderOptionalSection(“tablestart”, “<table>”)
Returns true if this section was rendered; false, if the section was present. This seems like a very simple method (and it is), but if your component has a number of different sections for styling (such as the SmartGridViewComponent, which has 18!), this can do wonders to streamline your code.
void RenderComponent<VC>(params string[] componentParams) where VC : ViewComponentEx, new();
void RenderComponent<VC>(IDictionary componentParams) where VC : ViewComponentEx, new();
void RenderComponent(ViewComponentEx component, params string[] componentParams);
void RenderComponent(ViewComponentEx component, IDictionary componentParams);
This implement, with a slightly different syntax, a technique originally devised by Joey Beninghove. The idea is to make a ViewComponent which is composite of several other VCs. The basic syntax is
RenderComponent<LinkSubmitButtonComponent>(“linkText=Search”,
string.Format(“formToSubmit={0}”, searchFormName));
However, the various overloads allow using an already exist component object, and/or an already built dictionary of options.
Also include in the source file is the class ViewComponentUsingSiteMap which, like ViewComponentEx, is an abstract base use for creating ViewComponents, but I’ll hold off discussing that until I ready to talk about the VCs the derive from it.