Adding CustomProperties to your VisualWebPart

When creating WebParts you sometimes need some specific configuration settings, this post will show you how to add a custom property to your webpart.

It’s an easy two-step process:

First we will add a public variable 'ListName' to the VisualWebPart's UserControl, *.ascx.cs

public string ListName { get; set; }

We do this in preparation, as we need to use the value here in the usercontrol code.

All Code:

using System;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

namespace SomeVisualWebPart.VisualWebPart1
{
    public partial class VisualWebPart1UserControl : UserControl
    {
        public string ListName { get; set; }

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // use ListName
        }
    }
}

The second and final step is to add code to the WebPart to add the custom property to it.

We'll start by adding a personalizable public variable to the WebParts *.cs code.

[Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared),
WebBrowsable(true),
WebDisplayName("List Name"),
WebDescription("The name of the List to display."),
Category("Custom Property")]
public string ListName
{
     get;
     set;
}

Then under the CreateChildControls section, change your code to implement 'controls' as your usercontrol and set the variable(s) needed to be passed to the usercontrol.

VisualWebPart1UserControl control = (VisualWebPart1UserControl)Page.LoadControl(_ascxPath);
control.ListName = this.ListName;
Controls.Add(control);

All Code:

using System;
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

namespace SomeVisualWebPart.VisualWebPart1
{
    [ToolboxItemAttribute(false)]
    public class VisualWebPart1 : WebPart
    {
        // Visual Studio might automatically update this path when you change the Visual Web Part project item.
        private const string _ascxPath = @"~/_CONTROLTEMPLATES/SomeVisualWebPart/VisualWebPart1/VisualWebPart1UserControl.ascx";

        [Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared),
        WebBrowsable(true),
        WebDisplayName("List Name"),
        WebDescription("The name of the List to display."),
        Category("Custom Property")]
        public string ListName
        {
            get;
            set;
        }

        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            VisualWebPart1UserControl control = (VisualWebPart1UserControl)Page.LoadControl(_ascxPath);
            control.ListName = this.ListName;
            Controls.Add(control);
        }
    }
}

Result: