Creating Custom Modules - Module Settings Control
(Page 5 of 7 )
The DotNetNuke framework allows you to add customized settings to the Module Settings Page. To do this you need to implement a Settings control.
To set up the Settings control follow the steps we took to create the View control with the following exceptions.
- Do not implement the IPortable, IActionable, and ISearchable interfaces.
- Change the text in the table to say OptionModuleRowOne and OptionModuleRowTwo.
- Save the file as Settings.ascx.
Add the following to the HTML section:
<%@ Control language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="EganEnterprises.CoffeeShopListing.Settings" CodeBehind="Settings.ascx.vb"%>
In the code-behind section it gets a little tricky. As opposed to the other two controls, this control inherits from ModuleSettingsBase instead of PortalModuleBase. This causes a problem in the Visual Studio designer when you attempt to view your form in design mode. The Visual Studio designer will show the following error.
This is because the ModuleSettingsBase has two abstract methods that we will need to implement: LoadSettings and UpdateSettings. So unless you want to design your control using only HTML, you will need to use the following workaround.
When you need to see this control in the designer, just comment out the Inherits ModuleSettingsBase declaration and both the public overrides methods (LoadSettings and UpdateSettings), and instead inherit from the PortalModuleBase. You can then drag and drop all the controls you would like to use from the toolbox and adjust them on your form. When you are happy with how it looks in the designer, simply switch over the Inherits statements. For now, the only code we need in the code-behind file for this control is the one below. We will add to this code once we have created the DAL (Data Access Layer)
Imports DotNetNuke
Namespace EganEnterprises.CoffeeShopListing
Public Class Settings
Inherits Entities.Modules.ModuleSettingsBase
'Inherits Entities.Modules.PortalModuleBase
Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As _
System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
'Put user code to initialize the page here
End Sub
Public Overrides Sub LoadSettings()
End Sub
Public Overrides Sub UpdateSettings()
End Sub
End Class
End Namespace
Just like the other controls, add an HTML table to the control so we can test our modules to this point.
With all your controls complete, build your project and verify that it builds successfully. At this point, the module still cannot be viewed in a browser within the DotNetNuke framework. To do this you will first need to add module definitions to the portal.
Next: Adding Module Definitions >>
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 This article is excerpted from chapter seven of the book Building Websites with VB.NET and DotNetNuke 3.0, written by Daniel N. Egan (PACKT Publishing, 2005; ISBN: 1904811272). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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