Case of the Missing Namespace

I blogged about this before and, maybe I didn't clearly explain the problem.

Take a look at the following code screen shots from two different .NET 2.0 projects:

Windows Forms:

ASP.NET Web Page:

Notice anything different?  You'll see that both class files have their usual “using” statements, both use partial classes, but the ASP.NET page is without a namespace declaration by default.

If you have VS2005 and would like to play along at home, then create a new solution, add a Windows Forms project and an ASP.NET web site.  You'll get the same results.

In fact, you'll get namespaces everywhere there's code, except for web sites and web service projects.

This can't be a bug and I'm giving the ASP.NET team the benefit of a doubt and I'm assuming that this is done by design.

I just can't figure out why they would make it this way. 

My best theory is that the ASP.NET team wanted C# to behave in a manner consistent to VB.NET, but once again, I can't explain why anyone would want that.

Can somebody explain the Case of the Missing Namespace?

Thanks in Advance,
Frank

With the new compilation model of ASP.NET 2.0, you cannot access any members of a code-behind class from any other class. If you want to have something globally accessible you need to put it in a separate code file in the App_Code folder.

Because the classes are externally inaccessible, putting them in a namespace is not useful.

So, if there's a user control that I would need to cast an object to, then that should go inside the app_code folder, too?

Frankie Fresh wrote:

So, if there's a user control that I would need to cast an object to, then that should go inside the app_code folder, too?

It seems to work fine when the User Control is in the root directory of the web project.

If you have a tendency to put user controls into their own sub folder (like most dev's do), you have no way to access a reference to the control or the type.

I came across this via Google, but I'm not totally sold on the idea.

http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/3016.aspx 

Regards,
Frank