Can I create custom directives in ASP.NET?

I have created a menu control in asp.net and have put it into master page. This menu control have property ActiveItem which when modified makes one or another item from menu appear as active.

To control active item from child page I have created a control which modifies master page property enforced by IMenuContainer interface to update menu control's active item in master page.

public class MenuActiveItem : Control
{
    public ActiveItemEnum ActiveItem
    {
        get
        {
            var masterPage = Page.Master as IMenuContainer;
            if (masterPage == null)
                return ActiveItemEnum.None;

            return masterPage.ActiveItem;
        }

        set
        {
            var masterPage = Page.Master as IMenuContainer;
            if (masterPage == null)
                return;

            masterPage.ActiveItem = value;
        }
    }
}

Everything works perfectly and I really enjoy this solution, but I was thinking that, if I knew how, I wo开发者_如何学Culd have created a custom directive with same feature instead of custom control because it just makes more sense that way.

Does anybody know how to do it?

You should be able to turn this into a custom property of your Page, which you can set in the Page directive.

Create a base class for your page, and then change your Page directives like this:

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/App.master"
CodeFileBaseClass="BasePage" ActiveItem="myActiveItem" AutoEventWireup="true"
CodeFile="Page1.aspx.cs" Inherits="Page1" %>

You may have to change the property to be a string, and do a conversion to the enum. But otherwise your code can remain the same, and it doesn't have to be in a control.