Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

A web part that has its own toolbar with different controls added to it programmatically is easy to build.

1) Create a web part and override CreateChildControls and Render methods:

[csharp]
public class WPT : WebPart {
protected ToolBar tlb;

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
base.CreateChildControls();
tlb = (ToolBar)Page.LoadControl(“/_controltemplates/ToolBar.ascx”);
tlb.ID = “NavNodesTB”;
tlb.Template_Buttons = new BtnTemplate();
Controls.Add(tlb);
}
protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
RenderChildren(writer);
}
}

[/csharp]

2) Create the BtnTemplate class that implements ITemplate interface. Add all the controls you want to show up on the toolbar

[csharp]
public class BtnTemplate : ITemplate
{
DropDownList ddlNumbers;
HyperLink tlBarLink;

void ITemplate.InstantiateIn(Control container)
{
tlBarLink = new HyperLink();
tlBarLink.ID = “idClickMeText”;
tlBarLink.Text = “Click Me”;
tlBarLink.ToolTip = “Click Me”;
tlBarLink.NavigateUrl = “javascript:alert(‘Hello World!’)”;

ddlNumbers = new DropDownList();
ddlNumbers.ID = “idNumbers”;
ddlNumbers.Load += new EventHandler(ddlNumbers_Load);
ddlNumbers.AutoPostBack = false;

container.Controls.Add(tlBarLink);
container.Controls.Add(ddlNumbers);

}

void ddlNumbers_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
ddlNumbers.Items.Clear();
ddlNumbers.Items.Add(new ListItem(“One”));
ddlNumbers.Items.Add(new ListItem(“Two”));
ddlNumbers.Items.Add(new ListItem(“Three”));
}
}

[/csharp]

3) Finally,deploy your web part and you are pretty much done! Here is how your web part looks like.

Source Code can be downloaded here.

Update 13/Sep/2008:   Another way of adding toolbar is now documented here.