In a previous post, I talked about how to go about creating your own ExtenderControls. Lately, I have been busy creating another control to add into the Ajax Control Toolkit, however this control is based off a ScriptControl.
In previous releases of ASP.NET AJAX, you needed to implement the IScriptControl interface. This meant implementing 2 methods (in similar fashion to extender controls). These methods are the:
IEnumerable<ScriptDescriptor> GetScriptDescriptors();
IEnumerable<ScriptReference> GetScriptReferences();
And also, you needed to provide code similar to the following in the Pre-Render event:
ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page).RegisterScriptControl<YourScriptControl>(this);
in order to register your control with the ScriptManager control. In the latest RC release, when implementing this interface, you also need to do the following code:
ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page).RegisterScriptDescriptors(this);
to also register your ScriptDescriptors and basically register your instance script with associated properties. So your Pre-Render event looks like:
protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnPreRender(e);
ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page).RegisterScriptControl<YourScriptControl>(this);
ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page).RegisterScriptDescriptors(this);
}
While this is required if implementing the IScriptControl interface, the RC release of ASP.NET Ajax also provides a base ScriptControl class that you can inherit from. What this means is that you still have to implement the 2 methods:
IEnumerable<ScriptDescriptor> GetScriptDescriptors();
IEnumerable<ScriptReference> GetScriptReferences();
but you dont have to provide the extra registration steps within the Pre-Render event. So inheriting from the System.Web.UI.ScriptControl class means a little less work, which is always good for someone as lazy as myself.
