Best Practices for ASP.NET Webforms Project structure

Question

When using ASP.NET webforms, I see two main ways to structure a project:

1) Have a lot of .aspx files (including code behind files) and maybe some .ascx files (with code behind files.

2) Rely on a lot of .cs files (class files), and have the classes construct everything with Controls.Add(), etc.

The first method above results in a lot of aspx and ascx files and very few .cs files. The second method above results in a lot of .cs files, but very fewer aspx and ascx files.

Is there a "best practices" way to structure project? Does Microsoft recommend one of these techniques? Is there any information on which of the two styles is used more commonly?

Answer 1

I would stick with the first approach. Some controls are extremely tedious (or difficult) to be created progamatically.

Take the GridView or ListView for example, create an *.aspx page with a GridView which has custom templates with template columns. Then run your application, find the *.dll in the ASP.NET temp directory, decompile the class and look how messy and complicated is the code. It would be very difficult to maintain it over time and/or make changes.

On the other hand, having some declarative code isn't bad as long as you try to maintain the balance.

Answer 2

If you haven't done so, check out ASP.NET MVC. If you cannot opt for MVC you can implement MVP pattern with ASP.NET WebForms. These two patterns provide good way to separate presentation, model and routing.