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TextboxList is a user friendly control that allows you to manage multiple inputs using single textbox.

A better way to control the painting of the .NET TabControl

Last week's article, Displaying a Grid of Data in ASP.NET MVC, showed, step-by-step, how to display a grid of data in an ASP.NET MVC application. Last week's article started with creating a new ASP.NET MVC application in Visual Studio, then added the Northwind database to the project and showed how to use Microsoft's Linq-to-SQL tool to access data from the database. The article then looked at creating a Controller and View for displaying a list of product information (the Model).

This article builds on the demo application created in Displaying a Grid of Data in ASP.NET MVC, enhancing the grid to include bi-directional sorting. If you come from an ASP.NET WebForms background, you know that the GridView control makes implementing sorting as easy as ticking a checkbox. Unfortunately, implementing sorting in ASP.NET MVC involves a bit more work than simply checking a checkbox, but the quantity of work isn't significantly greater and with ASP.NET MVC we have more control over the grid and sorting interface's layout and markup, as well as the mechanism through which sorting is implemented. With the GridView control, sorting is handled through form postbacks with the sorting parameters - what column to sort by and whether to sort in ascending or descending order - being submitted as hidden form fields. In this article we'll use querystring parameters to indicate the sorting parameters, which means a particular sort order can be indexed by search engines, bookmarked, emailed to a colleague, and so on - things that are not possible with the GridView's built-in sorting capabilities.

Like with its predecessor, this article offers step-by-step instructions and includes a complete, working demo available for download at the end of the article. Read on to learn more!

Show hows to alter the DatePicker to use keyboard up/down keys for cleverer date selection.

Show hows to alter DatePicker to use keyboard up/down for cleverer date selection

ASP.NET provides a variety of validation Web controls that can be used to validate a user's form field inputs. Unfortunately, the validation Web controls do not work with the CheckBox or CheckBoxList Web controls. If you set a validation control's ControlToValidate property to the ID of a CheckBox or CheckBoxList, the page will throw an HttpException, stating: "Control 'controlID' referenced by the ControlToValidate property of 'validationControlID' cannot be validated."

There may be times, however, when you need to provide validation for a CheckBox or CheckBoxList. Many Web pages with Terms of Service include a CheckBox titled "I agree to the above terms" that must be checked before continuing. Likewise, a Web Form may contain a set of options in the form of a CheckBoxList. Perhaps the user is required to check at least one of these options before continuing.

In this article we'll create two custom server controls, CheckBoxValidator and CheckBoxListValidator. The download at the end of this article includes both the entire source code and a compiled assembly that you can drop into your ASP.NET 2.0 web applications..

CueProvider is a lightweight class that lets you set a cue banner (the grey prompt text that automatically disappears when you begin to type) in a TextBox control.

The .NET Framework provides a variety of classes in the System.IO namespace that simplify working with the file system. Using these classes it's possible to delete files and folders, to create new files, to edit existing files, and more. These classes, combined with ASP.NET's suite of Web controls and databinding syntax, make it quite easy to present information about the files on the web server's file system to visitors to your website. With a bit of markup and code, it's possible to add a simple file browser to a web page that allows users to view the files and folders from a particular directory on the web server. Such file browsers are useful if you let users upload content to the website and need to let them view their uploaded content. If you have a folder that contains user-accessible content like images, PDF files and Word documents, a file browser offers a quick and easy way for users to see what content is available and to view content of interest.

Back in 2003 I wrote an article titled Displaying the Files in a Directory using a DataGrid that showed how to list the files of a particular folder in a DataGrid Web control. This dated article still attracts a decent amount of traffic and questions from readers, so much so that I thought it worthwhile to update the content to use the latest technology, namely ASP.NET 4 and the GridView Web control. I also added some new features. For example, the file browser now lists both files and folders, allowing users to view the files in subfolders. Also, I moved the markup and code into a User Control, which simplifies adding the file browser to an ASP.NET page. This article walks through this new, updated version; the complete, working code is available for download at the end of this article.

Shows how chart controls are used in ASP.NET MVC.

How to control the painting of the .NET TabControl