Asp Page Directives

Asp.Net Page directives are something that is a part of every asp.net pages. Page directives are instructions, inserted at the top of an ASP.NET page, to control the behavior of the asp.net pages. So it is type of mixed settings related to how a page should render and processed.

Here’s an example of the page directive.
<%@ Page Language="C#" Auto Event Wire up="true" Code File="Sample.aspx.cs" Inherits="Sample" Title="Sample Page Title" %>

Totally there are 11 types of Pages directives in Asp.Net 2.0. Some directives are very important without which we cannot develop any web applications in Asp.Net. Some directives are used occasionally according to its necessity. When used, directives can be located anywhere in an .aspx or .ask file, though standard practice is to include them at the beginning of the file. Each directive can contain one or more attributes (paired with values) that are specific to that directive
Asp.Net web form page framework supports the following directives

1. @Page
2. @Master
3. @Control @Master Directive
4. @Register
5. @Reference
6. @Previous Page Type
7. @Output Cache
8. @Import
9. @Implements
10. @Assembly
11. @Master Type



@Page Directive

The @Master directive is quite similar to the @Page directive. The @Master directive belongs to Master Pages that is .master files. The master page will be used in conjunction of any number of content pages. So the content pages can the  inherits the attributes of the master page. Even though, both @Page and @Master page directives are similar, the @Master directive has only fewer attributes as follows

a. Language: This attribute tells the compiler about the language being used in the code-behind. Values can represent any .NET-supported language, including Visual Basic, C#, or JScript .NET.

b. Auto Event Wire up: For every page there is an automatic way to bind the events to methods in the same master file or in code behind. The default value is True.

@Control Directive

The @Control directive is used when we build an Asp.Net user controls. The @Control directive helps us to define the properties to be inherited by the user control. These values are assigned to the user control as the page is parsed and compiled. The attributes of @Control directives are


@Register Directive

The @Register directive associates aliases with namespaces and class names for notation in custom server control syntax. When you drag and drop a user control onto your .aspx pages, the Visual Studio 2005 automatically creates an @Register directive at the top of the page. This registers the user control on the page so that the control can be accessed on the .aspx page by a specific name.

@Reference Directive

The @Reference directive declares that another asp.net page or user control should be complied along with the current page or user control. The 2 attributes for @Reference direcive are

a. Control: User control that ASP.NET should dynamically compile and link to the current page at run time.

b. Page: The Web Forms page that ASP.NET should dynamically compile and link to the current page at run time.

C. Virtual Path: Specifies the location of the page or user control from which the active page will be referenced.