Yesterday I solved one caching problem with local community portal. I enabled output cache on SharePoint Server 2007 to make site faster. Although caching works fine I needed to do some additional work because there are some controls that show different content to different users. In this example I will show you how to use “donut caching” with
user controls – powerful way to drive some content around cache. About donut caching Donut caching means that although you are caching your content you have some holes in it so you can still affect the output that goes to
user. By example you can cache front page on your site and still show welcome message that contains correct
user name. To get better idea about donut caching I suggest you to read ScottGu posting Tip/Trick: Implement "Donut Caching" with the ASP.NET 2.0 Output Cache Substitution Feature. Basically donut caching uses ASP.NET substitution
control. In output this
control is replaced by string you return from static method bound to substitution
control. Again, take a look at ScottGu blog posting I referred above. Problem If you look at Scott’s example it is pretty plain and easy by its output. All it does is it writes out current
user name as string. Here are examples of my login area for anonymous and authenticated users: It is clear that outputting mark-up for these views as string is pretty lame to implement in code at string level. Every little change in design will end up with new version of controls library because some parts of design “live” there. Solution: using
user controls I worked out easy solution to my problem. I used cache substitution and
user controls together. I have three
user controls: LogInControl – this is the proxy
control that checks which “real”
control to load. AnonymousLogInControl – template and logic for anonymous users login area. AuthenticatedLogInControl – template and logic for authenticated users login area. This is the
control we render for each
user separately because it contains
user name and
user profile fill percent. Anonymous
control is not very interesting because it is only about keeping mark-up in separate file. Interesting parts are LogInControl and AuthenticatedLogInControl. Creating proxy
control The first thing was to create
control that has substitution area where “real”
control is loaded. This proxy
control should also be available to decide which
control to load. The definition of
control is very primitive. <%@
Control EnableViewState="false" Inherits="MyPortal.Profiles.LogInControl" %> <asp:Substitution runat="server" MethodName="ShowLogInBox" /> But code is a little bit tricky. Based on current
user instance we decide which login
control to load. Then we create page instance and load our
control through it. When
control is loaded we will call DataBind() method. In this method we evaluate all fields in loaded
control (it was best choice as Load and other events will not be fired). Take a look at the code. public static string ShowLogInBox(HttpContext context) { var
user = SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser; string controlName; if (user != null) controlName = "AuthenticatedLogInControl.ascx"; else controlName = "AnonymousLogInControl.ascx"; var path = "~/_controltemplates/" + controlName; var output = new StringBuilder(10000); using(var page = new Page()) using(var ctl = page.LoadControl(path)) using(var writer = new StringWriter(output)) using(var htmlWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(writer)) { ctl.DataBind(); ctl.RenderControl(htmlWriter); } return output.ToString(); } When
control is bound to data we ask to render it its contents to StringBuilder. Now we have the output of
control as string and we can return it from our method. Of course, notice how correct I am with resources disposing. :) The method that returns contents for substitution
control is static method that has no connection with
control instance because hen page is read from cache there are no instances of controls available. Conclusion As you saw it was not very hard to use donut caching with
user controls. Instead of writing mark-up of controls to static method that is bound to substitution
control we can still use our
user controls.
