HtmlGenericControl("br") rendering twice - asp.net

Question

I'm adding some content to a given web page from code behind. When I want to add a break after some text, I try to do that this way:
pDoc.Controls.Add(New Label With {.Text = "whatever"})
pDoc.Controls.Add(New HtmlGenericControl("br"))
,where pDoc is the Panel in which I'm adding the content. But it adds two br tags into the final HTML.
I've avoid this behaviour this way:
pDoc.Controls.Add(New Label With {.Text = "whatever" & "<br />"})
Anyway, I'm so curious and I want to know why
pDoc.Controls.Add(New HtmlGenericControl("br"))
is acting that way. I also think my approach is not too fancy.
Regards,

Answer 1

Actually you can use;
pDoc.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<br/>"));
Whereas new HtmlGenericControl("br") adds two <br>, this will only add <br/> tag to your HTML so that you just have 1 space line.
In this picture I added those breaks with that code block.
Also similar question here: Server control behaving oddly

Answer 2

After some testing it looks like the reason is that HtmlGenericControl doesn't support self closing. On server side the HtmlGenericControl("br") is treated as:
<br runat="server"></br>
There is no </br> tag in HTML, so the browser shows it as there are two <br /> tags. Nice way out of this is to create HtmlGenericSelfCloseControl like this (sorry for C# code but you should have no issue with rewritting this in VB.NET):
public class HtmlGenericSelfCloseControl : HtmlGenericControl
{
public HtmlGenericSelfCloseControl()
: base()
{
}
public HtmlGenericSelfCloseControl(string tag)
: base(tag)
{
}
protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagLeftChar + this.TagName);
Attributes.Render(writer);
writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd);
}
public override ControlCollection Controls
{
get { throw new Exception("Self closing tag can't have child controls"); }
}
public override string InnerHtml
{
get { return String.Empty; }
set { throw new Exception("Self closing tag can't have inner content"); }
}
public override string InnerText
{
get { return String.Empty; }
set { throw new Exception("Self closing tag can't have inner text"); }
}
}
And use it instead:
pDoc.Controls.Add(New Label With {.Text = "whatever"})
pDoc.Controls.Add(New HtmlGenericSelfCloseControl("br"))
As a simpler alternative (if you have reference to the Page) you can try using Page.ParseControl:
pDoc.Controls.Add(New Label With {.Text = "whatever"})
pDoc.Controls.Add(Page.ParseControl("br"))