VB.Net User Controls Virtual Path

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8d52797c436

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Ultimate Geek
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#46751 9-Nov-2009 13:09

Hi All,

I'm having a bit of a problem with the web application I'm currently working on. In it there are a few Web User Controls that we use to display information on a bunch of different pages. They seem to compile alright and arent showing up any errors. The problem is trying to register them on other pages to access them is returning a 'file not found' error in visual studio (2005). I have them defined like this:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="cc2" TagName="ControlSelector" Src="~/components/controls/ControlSelector.ascx" %>

The strange thing is that when I remove the '~' from the front no error is shown but the path beomes ~//components/controls/ControlSelector.ascx when looking at the designer and obviously it cant find the control anyway.

I've spent nearly the whole morning trying to figure out the virtual path concepts but none of it seems to matter.

RedJungle

Phil Gale
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Red Jungle

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#271280 9-Nov-2009 13:25

I don't see any problem with your syntax.. if you 100% absolutely sure that "ControlSelector.ascx" is under ~/components/controls/ (with ~ meaning the root directory of course). Then some other things to potentially look at:

Be aware that @ Register declarations should come directly after the @ Page.
Are there other controls in the same directory? are they working?
Are there any potential directory permissing issues in this location?
Are you enforcing security on the website which disallows anonymous access to that directory? (this has caught be out more than once!)

Good luck. I'm sure it will be something really silly/simple in the end.

8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#271297 9-Nov-2009 14:28

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. I think the biggest problem here is that I have never really studied or worked on website pages in VB.Net before so there's quite a bit about this that I dont really understand. This stuff is all actually from a website that I have inherited for my job so most of it isnt stuff that I have written myself, and it seems almost a little too complicated to figure out without a background in this sort of thing.

All the controls are being called directly after the @ Control as these are all being called from .ascx files. Is that the same as the @ Page line you mentioned?

Registering the assembly for the project seems to work, but none of the registering to the files themselves are working.

I have checked the file permissions and it seems like there should be no permission issues with it. At least they are all being shared under the default website and anonymous access is allowed for the site.

I'm sure it will be just something small that I am missing. The strange thing is I have checked on a few of the pages that use the control, and while it says it cannot find the file specified it can still show the control in the designer for that page... It may be a severe case of Mondayitis but I'm completely stumped.

RedJungle

Phil Gale
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Red Jungle

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#271302 9-Nov-2009 14:39

Ah, I see - it appears you're trying to nest a user control inside another user control (.ascx) rather than inside an actual page (.aspx)? To be honest I'm not sure if this can be done - it's certainly something I'd try to avoid if at all possible. You should be embedding controls only within actual pages.

The quick fix would be simply to rearrange a few things so that user controls are called/embedded into pages rather than nested.

So if your currently doing this:

Page -> Control1 -> Control2

Then switch to

Page -> Control1
-> Control2

Or move the contents of Control2 into Control1.

Hope that makes sense?

8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#271310 9-Nov-2009 15:04

Ok thanks for the help. The problem I can see is that our site uses template pages for every page to get the menu and a few other things on there, and then we have subset controls for different things we want people to see and then sometimes, like with this selector control, we nest that inside the existing .ascx page. I have read an article on the MSDN online library which explains that it can be done and that it is fine to do so.

We have 3 copies of the site that we use. 1 is live, 1 is development, and 1 is a replica of the current live. I have been testing the control on all 3 and while it works on the development (even though VS says it cant find it) it doesnt work on the replica or the live site. I'm just going to have to keep playing around with it and figure out why it works on some controls and not others. Looks like fun times ahead.

nate

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#271311 9-Nov-2009 15:10

RedJungle: Ah, I see - it appears you're trying to nest a user control inside another user control (.ascx) rather than inside an actual page (.aspx)? To be honest I'm not sure if this can be done - it's certainly something I'd try to avoid if at all possible. You should be embedding controls only within actual pages.

It is doable and works - I have a couple of instances that have user controls embedded in user controls.

RedJungle

Phil Gale
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#271314 9-Nov-2009 15:18

8d52797c436:
We have 3 copies of the site that we use. 1 is live, 1 is development, and 1 is a replica of the current live. I have been testing the control on all 3 and while it works on the development (even though VS says it cant find it) it doesnt work on the replica or the live site. I'm just going to have to keep playing around with it and figure out why it works on some controls and not others. Looks like fun times ahead.

Okay, that's useful information. So the primary difference here will be the dev copy is running on the asp.net development server, where the live and replica will be IIS of some version?

Can you post the actual error message you're getting under IIS?

nate:
It is doable and works - I have a couple of instances that have user controls embedded in user controls.

I learn something new every day. In this case, that I should never get nate to design any of my architecture! :P But seriously, I guess I've never really had a need to arrange things in such a way - it strikes me as something that would be a messy/hard to manage practice long-term. But then as with everything, it will depend on circumstance.

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8d52797c436

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Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#271320 9-Nov-2009 15:34

We actually run both replica and dev versions (both hosted locally) using IIS on our development machines. I have tried loading up the pages and it doesnt seem to be causing any sort of hassle IIS as no error messages are being shown, the control just isnt appearing. I think I may have to stay late tonight or come in early tomorrow to try and do a deployment to our live site so i can check to see if it works without risking downtime on the site during business hours.

It does seem like a very complicated way of doing things, especially for someone like myself who didnt study web applications or vb.net or anything of that nature at university haha