Send data to a user control inside another user control

Question

What I need

I need for the Comments UC to make a collection of all the latest comments bound to the repeater in, for example, List<CommentInfo> and send it to Comment UC through DataRef property so I can display each comment.

I've tried to make a collection inside Comments_ItemDataBound , but I have no way of knowing when I've been through all the data since comments.Items.Count doesn't have a total item count before all the comments are being data bound.

int count = 1;
List<CommentInfo> commentsList = new List<CommentInfo>();
protected void comments_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item || e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.AlternatingItem)
    {
        cil.Add(new CommentInfo
        {
            username = DataBinder.Eval(e.Item.DataItem, "username").ToString()
            ...
        });

        // comments.Items.Count here is 0, on next data bound will be 1 and count will be 2
        if (comments.Items.Count == 5)
        {
            var comment = e.Item.FindControl("comment1") as Comment;
            comment.DataRef = commentsList;
        }
        count++;
    }
}

The problem this question is asking is how to make a List<CommentInfo> collection of all the comments to pass them to DataRef property.

---

Comments User Control has a repeater for showing the latest comments.
The repeater's DataSource is from SQL Server.

<asp:Repeater ID="comments" runat="server" onitemdatabound="Comments_ItemDataBound">
    <ItemTemplate>

        <uc1:Comment ID="comment1" runat="server" />

    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

Comment UC is to show one comment from the collection of comments it receives from Comments 's repeater through public property DataRef type of Object which I will cast to any class I need before I send it to Comment UC, at least that's my idea.

<div class="comment" id="<%= DataRef.comment_id %>">
    <a class="comment-link" href="/<%= DataRef.friendly_url %>">
    Written by: <strong><%= DataRef.username %></strong>, <%= DataRef.comment_date %></em>
    <%= DataRef.comment_text %></a>
</div>

Answer 1

One way is to ask for the data as he iterate the repeater

<asp:Repeater ID="comments" runat="server">
    <ItemTemplate>    
        <uc1:Comment ID="comment1" runat="server" 
               DataRef="<%#GetMyReference(Container.DataItem)%>" />        
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

and on code behind

public object GetMyReference(object oItem)
{
     // I am not sure what you wish to return here...
     // or you may want to full return the oItem, I am not sure
     //   this is an example
     return DataBinder.Eval(oItem, "yourDataItem");
}

Note that the DataRef is a public value on your user control.

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