This short article shows how you can turn an ASCX UserControl into one of these IFRAMES and use it to show ads (or whatever else suits your fancy).
First, we need to create a UserControl. Here is the ASCX Markup:
<%
@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="AdControl.ascx.cs" Inherits="IFrameAds.AdControl" %>
<iframe id="AdFrame" runat="server" width="468px" height="160px" frameborder="no" scrolling ="no" src="Altads.aspx"></iframe>
As can be seen above, all we need is our IFRAME on the control designer with the runat="server" attribute, and sufficient additional attributes to get the default display characteristics that we want. The "src" attribute is initially set to a simple script-only page that inserts random ads. This is specified also by some sample Google Adsense code I have in the AppSettings section of the web.config. Now here is the codebehind, which includes a custom "PlaceAd" method:
using
System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Collections;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
namespace
IFrameAds
{
public partial class AdControl : System.Web.UI.UserControl
{
public HtmlGenericControl AdControl1 = new HtmlGenericControl("IFRAME");
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
AdControl1 = (HtmlGenericControl)this.FindControl("AdFrame");
}
public void PlaceAd(string width, string height, string src, string style, string adCode)
{
AdControl1.Attributes["height"] = height;
AdControl1.Attributes["width"] = width;
AdControl1.Attributes["style"] = style;
// use one or the other of these ideas - either pass src, or pass adCode parameter:
if (src != null)
AdControl1.Attributes["src"] = src;
else
AdControl1.InnerHtml = adCode;
}
}
}
So with our control dragged onto a Page, we can tell it how big to be, and even set style attributes such as "float:left;" and so on, which makes it very flexible.To use the control on a page, all we need to do is drag it on from the Solution Explorer. In my sample ASPX page, I have code in Page_Load that places an ad, and I also have a button with a textbox that let's you see how the src property can be changed programmatically at runtime:
protected
void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
AdControl1.PlaceAd("468px", "260px", null, "float:right", ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["adCode160X240Left"]);
}
protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
AdControl1.PlaceAd("468px", "160px", txtUrl.Text, "float:left", null);
}
You can download the sample Visual Studio 2005 Solution here.