Here's seeking best practices advice by a completely green dotnetnukie... You can, however, assume a reasonable amount of experience with ASP .NET 2.0 on my part. I want to create a multi-page .NET web application (a WAP, not a website) such that each screen is part of a navigational sequence that comprises a single application "state," and some of the screens are interrelated (e.g. an interactive, online examination). I'd like to do this in a way that
- Maximizes/Adopts all the features that the DNN framework provides to support such a task,
- Gives me a maintainable codebase for the application (i.e. not have HUGE ascx or code behind files)
- Makes deployment of the application simple
To this end, (3) suggests that I implement the application in a single module... However, I've not been able to find a definitive answer to this problem.
I've seen one idea involving a "dispatcher" that dynamically loads modules (not controls) - article is at http://www.wwwcoder.com/Directory/tabid/68/type/art/site/2050/parentid/224/Default.aspx - though this unfortunately uses DNN 1.0.10 and I'm not sure how to map the code to more recent versions of the framework.
Another excellent set of suggestions were given in an article referenced by Michael Washington in another thread (http://www.adefwebserver.com/DotNetNukeHELP/Misc/ModuleNavigationOptions.htm#Multiple_View_Control_Definitions); I like all of the ideas in this article, particularly the MultiView, though my concern is the size of the user control code (ascx and codebehind), and I'm not sure if splitting the codebehind across multiple partial-class files would work well since I've never experimented with that before in the .NET 2.0 WAP framework. I don't want to deal with the complexities of dynamically loaded controls, and the other two options don't really suit the nature of the application I want to write.
Any help is welcome and appreciated! - Regards.