title: Setting a server control property from the content page
body: <p>I need to validate a textbox to ensure the submit date is older than Today. I wanted to use a CompareValidator to do that, but unfortunately the following code doesn't work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;asp:CompareValidator ID="cvtbDateExpiration" ControlToValidate="tbDateExpiration"
      Operator="GreaterThan" Type="Date" ValueToCompare="&lt;%= DateTime.Today %&gt;"   
      ErrorMessage="Card has expired" runat="server" /&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The compiler tells me that <code>ValueToCompare="&lt;%= DateTime.Today %&gt;"</code> is wrong: "This is not scriptlet. Will be output as plain text."</p>
  
  <p>Is there a simple way to achieve this (without setting it using the Code Behind)?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>