Have you noticed that the MaxLength property of the ASP.NET TextBox seems to not work on MultiLine TextBoxes? Are you tired of having to manually do this validation? Well, those days are over.

With this CompositeControl you'll be able to just drag and drop this functionality from Visual Studio's Toolbox. This control will have the look and feel of a MultiLine Textbox with enhanced client- and server-side validation that restricts the length of its Text through its MaxLength property. The client- and server-side validation will be compatible with other validation controls.

• Click here to see how the control works
• Click here to view the core code
• Click here to download a .zip file with the VS.NET Solution. The solution includes two projects:
  • The CompositeControl's DLL
  • A tester ASP.NET project

Getting the RestrictedTextArea's DLL to work

In order to get the RestrictedTextArea to work in your ASP.NET project, you must add the RestrictedTextArea control to your Toolbox by doing the following: Go to the General section of the Toolbox, right click it, select "Choose Items…". In the .NET Framework Components tab, hit the "Browse…" button and browse for the RestrictedTextAreaControl.dll located on the "bin" folder of the RestrictedTextAreaControl project directory. Once you’ve found the dll file, click the Open button; this will take you back to the Choose Toolbox Items dialog. On this dialog, click the OK button.

Once the RestrictedTextArea control is in your Toolbox, simply drag and drop it to your aspx page and you're set.

Licensing

Feel free to use this control in your applications. Just please don't sell it and if you can give me credit in your source code, do so by mentioning pedroliska.com there.