| That's all there is to it. As you can see, bundling commonly used form elements and their validation controls into VControls can save you a lot of development effort, especially if you frequently find yourself building forms like these. The beauty of validation controls in general is their ease of use, and with VControls, things can't get much easier. Look for a variety of free, ready-to-use VControls at ASPSmith.com/ vcontrols /. Validation controls are very easy to use and relatively simple in concept, but they add a great deal to the productivity of Web site developers, especially when compared to the amount of work required in Classic ASP to accomplish the same task. In this chapter, we looked at different kinds of validation and how validation has typically been done prior to .NET. We examined the BaseValidator class, from which all the other validation controls (except the Summary) are derived. We looked at examples of how to use the RequiredFieldValidator , RangeValidator , CompareValidator , RegularExpressionValidator , and CustomValidator controls. We then looked at the ValidationSummary control, which allows you to tie the results of many different validator controls together. Finally, we introduced the idea of user controls, which will be covered in detail in the next chapter, as a way to package frequently used validations and form inputs for use on many different forms. |
