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The following pages explain what wxegen.exe does and how. For understanding the following discussion, these pages will be helpful (read in this order, if you haven't done so already):
As you can see in this screenshot, wxegen.exe is called by Visual Studio as a build event in the web-project as generated by uigen.exe, the web-project generator:
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Programming transitions from one page to the next in conventional ASP.NET 2.0 works like GOTO-programming from a forgotten era:
- if the user clicks on a link, follow the link and GO TO that page
- for remembering from which page you came from you have to remember that page yourself
- for passing data between pages, you must resort to global "variables"
Mature programmers who have been there, done that, might feel nostalgic about this type of web programming, but at the same time will probably admit that the late Edsger W. Dijkstra was on to something.
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Such modal dialogs are not programmed with GOTOs, they lend themselves well to procedural programming, and this is what re-call offers here. It brings procedural programming to ASP.NET programmers, complete with
- callable functions (called "page functions", or "WXE functions")
- typed parameters (called "wxe parameters")
- typed local variables (called "page-local variables")
- typed return values (boringly called "return values")
A very complete example including all these features is the Pick location form in the PhoneBook application. This form is a re-call function, of course. You can find a detailed discussion of Pick location here: Pick location, the page function.