What else can I do with my Page Template?
We have seen how we can ensure design consistency by using Page Templates. Let’s go a bit further & try to do more with it.
We have to ensure that all ASP.NET developers, within a team, code their pages such that minimum rework is required during integration. This means that all pages have to be consistent in design & behavior.
Here are a list of behavioral features that would be common to all pages within a site –
- Session handling
– Normally, you would have to explicitly set common session variables like user ID, language, etc. Also, you would have to repeatedly do session checks to see if a valid user has logged in.
- Internationalization
– All pages would require access to resource files to handle the display of text in various languages. Also, you would have to explicitly set the Culture objects for each page.
- Database connectivity –
All pages would interact with a class that would handle database connections through ADO.NET. Or, your page itself would open a connection to the database.
- Error handling –
All pages would behave in the same manner when encountering an error – log the error, redirect to an error page & display the appropriate error message.
- Use of utility classes
– All pages would interact with a set of utility classes for mailing, logging, etc.
- Help function
– All pages would behave in the same manner when the help button is clicked – open a help window, show help file. All help files would be grouped together.
- Button functionality
– All pages would have a common set of buttons. Some pages may have all buttons displayed & others may not. For example – a site may have 3 buttons in all their pages (Continue, Restart & Exit) except for their first & last page.
Now, it is possible for you to provide all these features in your Page Template itself. You no longer have to worry about ASP.NET developers in your team providing these very features inconsistently across pages. Also, your developers would save time as they would not have to bother about these features.
