Understanding Code Behind in .Net Framework

The ASP.NET Code Behind feature in .Net Framework allows developers to separate the server-side code from the presentation layer. This concept makes the server-side code to store in one file and the presentation code, that is, HTML code in another file. When you compile the ASP.NET page both these files get compiled as a single entity. In the traditional ASP model, this could not be achieved which often leads to intermingling of the code and the design.

The biggest advantage, in ASP.NET, is that the presentation code will be in .aspx file and the server-side code will be in any .Net compatible language such as Visual Basic.Net, C#, or J#. You can also do away with the presentation layer because you can give this role to the web designers. This saves time and you can concentrate only on the coding part of the application. In addition, you can create a class for your code and inherit this class from the ASP.NET Page object. By this way the class can access the page intrinsics and also interact with the postback architecture. After this you can create the ASP.NET page and apply a page directive to inherit from this new class.

But before you create an ASP.NET Code Behind class, you have to reference it to a namespace. The namespace could be System.Web.UI or` System.Web.UI.WebControls. Next you have to inherit the class from the Page object. You must declare some public instances of server controls using the name for the variables that are similar to the web controls. This procedure will create a link between the ASP.NET Code Behind class and the server controls.

You can use the ASP.NET Code Behind feature in various web applications development tools such as Visual Studio.Net and ASP.NET Web Matrix. They provide very easy ways to use the ASP.NET Code Behind. After dragging and dropping the server control from the Toolbox to the web page you can just right click on it to view the ASP.NET Code Behind page.

To access online version of the above article, go to http://www.dotnet-guide.com/codebehind.html