Is inline code in your aspx pages a good practice?

Question

If I use the following code I lose the ability to right click on variables in the code behind and refactor (rename in this case) them

<a href='<%# "/Admin/Content/EditResource.aspx?ResourceId=" + Eval("Id").ToString() %>'>Edit</a>

I see this practice everywhere but it seems weird to me as I no longer am able to get compile time errors if I change the property name. My preferred approach is to do something like this

<a runat="server" id="MyLink">Edit</a>

and then in the code behind

MyLink.Href= "/Admin/Content/EditResource.aspx?ResourceId=" + myObject.Id;

I'm really interested to hear if people think the above approach is better since that's what I always see on popular coding sites and blogs (e.g. Scott Guthrie) and it's smaller code, but I tend to use ASP.NET because it is compiled and prefer to know if something is broken at compile time, not run time.

Answer 1

I wouldnt call it bad practice (some would disagree, but why did they give us that option in the first place?), but I would say that you'll improve overall readability and maintainability if you do not submit to this practice. You already conveyed out a good point, and that is IDE feature limitation (i.e., design time inspection, compile time warning, etc.).

I could go on and on about how many principles it violates (code reuse, separation of concerns, etc.), but I can think of many applications out there that break nearly every principle, but still work after several years. I for one, prefer to make my code as modular and maintainable as possible.