Introduction to custom server controls

Well this class is so small I'll just show you all of the code at once:

using System;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using Guestbook.Engine;
namespace Guestbook
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Summary description for GuestbookRepeater.
    /// </summary>
    [ParseChildren(true)]
    public class GuestbookRepeater : Repeater
    {
        protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnInit(e);
            DataSource = XmlEngine.GetGuestbookEntries();
            DataBind();
        }
    }
}

As you can see, no magic here, just a single overridden method that sets a hard coded value as the control's DataSource . DataBind method is also called here. Although there is one little piece of “magic” – the class derives from System.Web.UI.WebControls.Repeater .

Now we're actually finished, but I'd like to show you how you can add these controls to any of your pages...