Content is not allowed between the opening and closing tags for user control

Question

I want to build a user control suppose MyDiv.ascx. This control renders the div tag and do few more code behind stuff like adding few attributes etc which is not a matter of concern here. The problem is I want text between the opening and closing tags of the user control. Eg:

The text goes here with some other HTML tags.

So when do something like this I get a parsing error while running the website. Also VS2008 warns me by saying "Content is not allowed between the opening and closing tags for element MyDiv".

• Question 1: Can I do something like this i.e. text/markup between opening and closing tags of a user control?

• Question 2: If yes, how

Answer 1

The suggested solutions did not work for me. I found the following solutions: Either make your user control inherit from Panel instead of only UserControl, or if you have more than one content like in my case, make your content fields be PlaceHolders instead of simple Controls.

The [PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)] is added to avoid XHTML validation warning.

public partial class DrawerControl : UserControl
{
    [PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)]
    public PlaceHolder BodyContent { get; set; }
    [PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)]
    public PlaceHolder GripContent { get; set; }

    protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnInit(e);
        phBodyContent.Controls.Add(BodyContent);
        phGripContent.Controls.Add(GripContent);
    }
}

phBodyContentand phGripContent being PlaceHolders.

This way I can use my control with any content in ASPX:

<local:Drawer ID="ctlDrawer" runat="server">
    <BodyContent>
        <!--Insert any ASP content here-->
    </BodyContent>
    <GripContent>
        <!--Insert any ASP content here-->
    </GripContent>
</local:Drawer>