Is this the best way to open a dialog for a custom page?

Question

I did some looking around and I was planning on creating the following js function to open a custom page in a dialog:

     //Handle the DialogCallback callback 
          function DialogCallback(dialogResult, returnValue){ 
          } 

      //Open the Dialog 
      function OpenDialog(url){ 
       var options = { 
            url:url + "?IsDlg=1", 
         width: 700, 
         height: 700, 
         dialogReturnValueCallback: DialogCallback 
         };
     SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);
     return false;
      }

Is this the right way to do this? I thought I had read somewhere that I could just add the IsDlg query string parameter to make this happen, but this does not appear to work.

Answer 1

I guess we haven't established whether or not you are actually able to see a dialog window open, or whether it looks like a full page when it opens, and not a dialog window.

If it's the latter, when you are calling your OpenDialog function, does the url you are passing already contain a query string?

For example

OpenDialog("/_layouts/custompage.aspx?someparam=1");

If so, I'm not sure the "?IsDlg=1" that you are appending will work. If the url you are passing to OpenDialog already contains a querystring, you would need to append "&IsDlg=1" instead.

Answer 2

With the Custom Dialog you have two things; the caller which includes the javascript code you included and then the page that is loaded in the dialog. The code you provided would load the given page in a dialog. Typically that is stored separately from the calling page.

As @andrew.petersen15 noted, the IsDlg=1 is just used to change the way the page is rendered and strips off many of the page objects such as the ribbon and nav since they do not apply within a dialog.

Answer 3

That is the only way I have seen. From what I understand , the "IsDlg=1" querystring parameter strips the ribbon and navigtion controls off the page, but doesn't actually create the dialogue box.