Incorporate Existing ASPX Pages into Iron Speed Designer

Incorporate Existing ASPX Pages into Iron Speed Designer Applications

There is absolutely no requirement that you build and compile your external application with Iron Speed Designer in order to integrate your external application with an Iron Speed Designer application. However, in certain circumstances, you may find it convenient to do so.

Including external ASPX pages in your Iron Speed Designer project

To incorporate stand-alone ASPX pages into your Iron Speed Designer application, copy them into your Iron Speed Designer application’s folder.

If you are using the VBC or CSC compilers to compile your Iron Speed Designer application (set in the Application Wizard), there are no additional changes that need to be made. Your external ASPX pages will be automatically compiled at run-time by the VBC or CSC compilers.

If you are using the Visual Studio .NET compiler to compile your Iron Speed Designer application, update the VBPROJ or CSPROJ file in Visual Studio .NET to include these new files into the project file so they can be compiled and included with your project. Iron Speed Designer will then automatically compile them when you build your application in Iron Speed Designer.

Using Iron Speed Designer generated controls in an external application

You can place Iron Speed Designer generated controls on pages in an external application. This is a great way to add data-bound controls, such as a data-bound text box, field value, or table, into your existing application.

Step 1: Place the external file into a subfolder of your Iron Speed Designer application, e.g.:

C:\MyApp\MyASPXPages

Step 2: Rename the newly added file to .HTML, even though it may be be another page type, such as ASPX or ASP. Renaming the page to .HTML allows the Application Explorer to recognize the page.

Step 3: In Iron Speed Designer, select View, Refresh to display this new file in the Application Explorer.

Step 4: Select the newly added file in the Application Explorer and select Tools, Page Properties. This displays the Page Properties dialog for the newly added page.

Step 5: Press Show Tree at the bottom of the Page Properties dialog, and select the top-most node in the tree displayed on the left. This node will be MyPage.html, or similar.

Step 6: Click on the Bindings tab on the right and select Page as the Component Type.

Step 7: Press OK to save and Rebuild All.

This external page will now be part of the Iron Speed Designer generated pages and you will then be able to add controls from the Iron Speed Designer tool box in the Design tab.

Incorporating an external ASPX page as an ASCX control

You can incorporate an external ASPX page as an ASCX control and place this on an Iron Speed Designer generated page.

Step 1: Repeat the steps in the previous section. However, select Custom ASCX Control as the Component Type.

Now you can create a new page using the Master Page template.

Step 2: After creating a new page using the Master Page template, go to the Design tab. Open the Toolbox Controls and drag and drop the “Include Component” control. A new control will be inserted and called “Include”.

Step 3: Double click on the control to open the Page Properties dialog. Go to the Display table.

Step 4: (IMPORTANT) Click on the Browse button and select the HTML file from the application folder.

Step 5: (IMPORTANT) Press OK to save and Rebuild All. Note that if you do not Browse and select a file and save the bindings, the include component will not have a binding saved and no code will be generated for this control. As such, these two steps are very important.

Your ASPX page should now be displayed as part of the Master Page with the same look and feel as the rest of your application.