Inheriting from a base page class / Alternatives

[dragonwell]

I've been creating my own "BasePage" class which inherits from System.Web.UI.Page. In all my code behind classes I inherit from my BasePage, instead of System.Web.UI.Page. This way, I can create properties in my Base page that I want all my pages to have, and I can create commonly used objects in the BasePage constructor. This is a great aid to development. Sometimes I also go as far as to override System.Web.UI.Page's render method to include my own hard-coded content as a form a templating.

The only problem is, Visual Studio.NET's designer hates my pages that do not inherit from System.Web.UI.Page. Most of the time it won't even render the page in designer, just html.

I was wondering if anyone has done similarly and found a work-around to this?

OR

is there another way to include common objects and properties in all my pages? I've been experimenting with the Global.asax file and the Application_BeginRequest event, but so far I've only been able to add objects to the context and not actually instantiate anything that could be used on a page.

Anyone?

Regards,
David

 

[dragonwell]

Well, I fixed my problem. If anyone's interested - apparently Visual Studio attempts to "run" some aspect of your code when going into Designer Mode. If an error occurs on the class that the Page inherits from, it can;t load the Designer. I was using "Page.Context" in my base class, which always returns the Request at runtime - but it is null during design time. Now, I check to see if it is null before trying to use it and everyone's happy.