I have a ToolStripMenuItem called myMenu. How can I access this like so:
/* Normally, I would do: */
this.myMenu... etc.
/* But how do I access it like this: */
String name = myMenu;
this.name...
This is because I am dynamically generating ToolStripMenuItems from an XML file and need to reference MenuItems by their dynamically generated names.
Use the Control.ControlCollection.Find method.
Try this:
this.Controls.Find()
string name = "the_name_you_know";
Control ctn = this.Controls[name];
ctn.Text = "Example...";
Assuming you have the menuStrip object and the menu is only one level deep, use:
ToolStripMenuItem item = menuStrip.Items
.OfType<ToolStripMenuItem>()
.SelectMany(it => it.DropDownItems.OfType<ToolStripMenuItem>())
.SingleOrDefault(n => n.Name == "MyMenu");
For deeper menu levels add more SelectMany operators in the statement.
if you want to search all menu items in the strip then use
ToolStripMenuItem item = menuStrip.Items
.Find("MyMenu",true)
.OfType<ToolStripMenuItem>()
.Single();
However, make sure each menu has a different name to avoid exception thrown by key duplicates.
To avoid exceptions you could use FirstOrDefault instead of SingleOrDefault / Single, or just return a sequence if you might have Name duplicates.
Control GetControlByName(string Name)
{
foreach(Control c in this.Controls)
if(c.Name == Name)
return c;
return null;
}
Disregard this, I reinvent wheels.
Using the same approach of Philip Wallace, we can do like this:
public Control GetControlByName(Control ParentCntl, string NameToSearch)
{
if (ParentCntl.Name == NameToSearch)
return ParentCntl;
foreach (Control ChildCntl in ParentCntl.Controls)
{
Control ResultCntl = GetControlByName(ChildCntl, NameToSearch);
if (ResultCntl != null)
return ResultCntl;
}
return null;
}
Example:
public void doSomething()
{
TextBox myTextBox = (TextBox) this.GetControlByName(this, "mytextboxname");
myTextBox.Text = "Hello!";
}
I hope it help! :)
this.Controls.Find(name, searchAllChildren) doesn't find ToolStripItem because ToolStripItem is not a Control
using SWF = System.Windows.Forms;
using NUF = NUnit.Framework;
namespace workshop.findControlTest {
[NUF.TestFixture]
public class FormTest {
[NUF.Test]public void Find_menu() {
// == prepare ==
var fileTool = new SWF.ToolStripMenuItem();
fileTool.Name = "fileTool";
fileTool.Text = "File";
var menuStrip = new SWF.MenuStrip();
menuStrip.Items.Add(fileTool);
var form = new SWF.Form();
form.Controls.Add(menuStrip);
// == execute ==
var ctrl = form.Controls.Find("fileTool", true);
// == not found! ==
NUF.Assert.That(ctrl.Length, NUF.Is.EqualTo(0));
}
}
}
One of the best way is a single row of code like this:
In this example we search all PictureBox by name in a form
PictureBox[] picSample =
(PictureBox)this.Controls.Find(PIC_SAMPLE_NAME, true);
Most important is the second paramenter of find.
if you are certain that the control name exists you can directly use it:
PictureBox picSample =
(PictureBox)this.Controls.Find(PIC_SAMPLE_NAME, true)[0];
You can use find function in your Form class. If you want to cast (Label) ,(TextView) ... etc, in this way you can use special features of objects. It will be return Label object.
(Label)this.Controls.Find(name,true)[0];
name: item name of searched item in the form
true: Search all Children boolean value
this.Controls["name"];
This is the actual code that is ran:
public virtual Control this[string key]
{
get
{
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(key))
{
int index = this.IndexOfKey(key);
if (this.IsValidIndex(index))
{
return this[index];
}
}
return null;
}
}
vs:
public Control[] Find(string key, bool searchAllChildren)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(key))
{
throw new ArgumentNullException("key", SR.GetString("FindKeyMayNotBeEmptyOrNull"));
}
ArrayList list = this.FindInternal(key, searchAllChildren, this, new ArrayList());
Control[] array = new Control[list.Count];
list.CopyTo(array, 0);
return array;
}
private ArrayList FindInternal(string key, bool searchAllChildren, Control.ControlCollection controlsToLookIn, ArrayList foundControls)
{
if ((controlsToLookIn == null) || (foundControls == null))
{
return null;
}
try
{
for (int i = 0; i < controlsToLookIn.Count; i++)
{
if ((controlsToLookIn[i] != null) && WindowsFormsUtils.SafeCompareStrings(controlsToLookIn[i].Name, key, true))
{
foundControls.Add(controlsToLookIn[i]);
}
}
if (!searchAllChildren)
{
return foundControls;
}
for (int j = 0; j < controlsToLookIn.Count; j++)
{
if (((controlsToLookIn[j] != null) && (controlsToLookIn[j].Controls != null)) && (controlsToLookIn[j].Controls.Count > 0))
{
foundControls = this.FindInternal(key, searchAllChildren, controlsToLookIn[j].Controls, foundControls);
}
}
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
if (ClientUtils.IsSecurityOrCriticalException(exception))
{
throw;
}
}
return foundControls;
}
Assuming you have Windows.Form Form1 as the parent form which owns the menu you've created. One of the form's attributes is named .Menu. If the menu was created programmatically, it should be the same, and it would be recognized as a menu and placed in the Menu attribute of the Form.
In this case, I had a main menu called File. A sub menu, called a MenuItem under File contained the tag Open and was named menu_File_Open. The following worked. Assuming you
// So you don't have to fully reference the objects.
using System.Windows.Forms;
// More stuff before the real code line, but irrelevant to this discussion.
MenuItem my_menuItem = (MenuItem)Form1.Menu.MenuItems["menu_File_Open"];
// Now you can do what you like with my_menuItem;
Since you're generating them dynamically, keep a map between a string and the menu item, that will allow fast retrieval.
// in class scope
private readonly Dictionary<string, ToolStripMenuItem> _menuItemsByName = new Dictionary<string, ToolStripMenuItem>();
// in your method creating items
ToolStripMenuItem createdItem = ...
_menuItemsByName.Add("<name here>", createdItem);
// to access it
ToolStripMenuItem menuItem = _menuItemsByName["<name here>"];
Have a look at the ToolStrip.Items collection. It even has a find method available.
You can do the following:
private ToolStripMenuItem getToolStripMenuItemByName(string nameParam)
{
foreach (Control ctn in this.Controls)
{
if (ctn is ToolStripMenuItem)
{
if (ctn.Name = nameParam)
{
return ctn;
}
}
}
return null;
}
A simple solution would be to iterate through the Controls list in a foreach loop. Something like this:
foreach (Control child in Controls)
{
// Code that executes for each control.
}
So now you have your iterator, child, which is of type Control. Now do what you will with that, personally I found this in a project I did a while ago in which it added an event for this control, like this:
child.MouseDown += new MouseEventHandler(dragDown);
hi all here i try to make method which can loop on the form and convert any text boxenter image description here from Read only=true to be Read only = false but its not working
public static void unread only(Form frm)
{
foreach (Control item in frm.Controls)
{
if (item is TextBox)
{
// item.ReadOnly = false;
}
}
}
In your code, the compiler thinks that the object you have found is a Control, and does not know what type of control it is. You need to tell it what sort of control it is, and you can do this by casting it to a textbox:
((TextBox)item).ReadOnly = false;
However, there are better ways of doing this. Your code will only look at Top-level controls, and if you have container controls on your form, it will not recursively search those to find other textboxes. A recursive method to do this is as follows:
public static IEnumerable<T> GetControlsOfType<T>(Control root)
where T : Control
{
var t = root as T;
if (t != null)
yield return t;
var container = root as ContainerControl;
if (container != null)
foreach (Control c in container.Controls)
foreach (var i in GetControlsOfType<T>(c))
yield return i;
}
This is some code I got from here. It allows you to do something like this:
foreach (var textBox in GetControlsOfType<TextBox>(theForm))
{
textBox.ReadOnly = false;
}
Primarily your problem is that you are not casting the control to TextBox so that you have access to the property you want to set.
foreach (Control item in frm.Controls) {
if (item is TextBox) {
var textBox = item as TextBox;
textBox.ReadOnly = false;
}
}
That said, controls can contain child control, so you would need to crawl the entire form looking for embedded text boxes.
This will check the form and its controls for text boxes and set them to read only
public static void SetReadOnly(Control frm) {
var controls = new Queue<Control>();
controls.Enqueue(frm);
while (controls.Count > 0) {
var control = controls.Dequeue();
if (control is TextBox) {
var txtBox = control as TextBox;
txtBox.ReadOnly = true;
}
if (control.HasChildren) {
foreach (var child in control.Controls.OfType<Control>()) {
controls.Enqueue(child);
}
}
}
}
The code is pretty self explanatory but you should walk through the flow to understand what it is doing.
You need to be recursive. A Form Control can contain other Controls.
I want to know if it's possible to find a control in a repeater but by approximation. I mean, I have some controls with end "....EditMode" and I want to catch them all and modify some attribute
Something like this
foreach(RepeaterItem item in repeater1.Items)
{
HtmlGenericControl divEditMode = item.FindControl("....IndexOf ("EditMode")");
if(divEditMode != null)
{
divEditMode.Visible = false;
}
}
foreach(RepeaterItem item in repeater1.Items)
{
foreach (var control in item.Controls)
{
if(control.ID.EndsWith("EditMode"))
{
control.Visible = false;
}
}
}
If I understand your wishes.
The way to accomplish this is to loop through the controls "by hand" instead of using FindControl. You can use the Controls collection of the RepeaterItem to list all controls and analyze their ids.
As controls are organized as a tree, you should recursively inspect also the Controls collections of the controls on the top level.
private IEnumerable<Control> GetEditControls(ControlCollection controls)
{
var lst = new List<Control>();
if (controls == null)
return lst;
foreach(var ctrl in controls)
{
if (ctrl.Id.EndsWith("EditMode"))
lst.Add(ctrl);
lst.AddRange(GetControls(ctrl.Controls);
}
return lst;
}
// ...
foreach(RepeaterItem item in repeater1.Items)
{
var divsEditMode = GetEditControls(item.Controls);
foreach(var divEditMode in divsEditMode)
{
divEditMode.Visible = false;
}
}
When I use th below code, it works. All the controls are hidden.
foreach (Control ctr in eItem.Controls)
{
ctr.visible = false;
}
However, I want to hide only labels and dropdownlists. That why I'm trying to use the below code without success
foreach (Control ctr in eItem.Controls)
{
if(ctr is Label | ctr is DropDownList)
{
ctr.visible = false;
}
}
EDIT
Here's the whole method
private void HideLabelAndDDLOnPageLoad()
{
foreach (ListViewItem eItem in lsvTSEntry.Items)
{
foreach (Control ctr in eItem.Controls)
{
if (ctr is Label || ctr is DropDownList)
{
ctr.Visible = false;
}
}
}
}
When I remove the if, all the controls get hidden. When I put it back, nothing happens.
Thanks for helping
I think what you are after is || change it to ||...that is the logical or operator.
foreach (Control ctr in eItem.Controls)
{
if(ctr is Label || ctr is DropDownList)
{
ctr.Visible = false;
}
}
| = bitwise operator
|| = logical or operator
Based on your edit
It appears your controls are inside an updatepanel, if that is the case you want to loop for all controls within the updatepanel's content template container.
Here you go:
foreach (Control ctr in UpdatePanel1.ContentTemplateContainer.Controls)
{
// rest of code
if(ctr is Label || ctr is DropDownList)
{
ctr.Visible = false;
}
}
The | is the bitwise or operator.
You are looking for ||, the logical or operator.
if(ctr is Label || ctr is DropDownList)
Without your exact markup we can only guess the solution here.
You must be using another container to wrap your controls inside your ItemTemplate in the ListView, something like a Panel or other containers. When you get the Controls on the list view item you actually get the warping container and not its children(labels, dropdowns etc.)
One solution to this is something like:
foreach (ListViewItem item in lsvTSEntry.Items)
{
item.FindControl("myLabel").Visible = false;
item.FindControl("myDropdownList").Visible = false;
}
Basically you try to find the controls by id and hide them. Notice there is no error checking there so you could get a NullReferenceException if FindControl returns null.
In case you have nested containers in your ItemTemplate and you want to hide all the labels and dropdowns regardless of where they are you can implement your own recursive FindControl that will look like:
private Control FindControlRecursive(Control rootControl, string controlId)
{
if (rootControl.ID == controlId)
{
return rootControl;
}
foreach (Control controlToSearch in rootControl.Controls)
{
Control controlToReturn = FindControlRecursive(controlToSearch, controlId);
if (controlToReturn != null)
{
return controlToReturn;
}
}
return null;
}
Not the most elegant but.... You can change this to take an array of Id's of course for speed purposes.
Based on this of course you can implement the search by control type which instead of taking a controlId as a parameter will take the types of controls to find.
I have a Form named A.
A contains lots of different controls, including a main GroupBox. This GroupBox contains lots of tables and others GroupBoxes. I want to find a control which has e.g. tab index 9 in form A, but I don't know which GroupBox contains this control.
How can I do this?
With recursion...
public static IEnumerable<T> Descendants<T>( this Control control ) where T : class
{
foreach (Control child in control.Controls) {
T childOfT = child as T;
if (childOfT != null) {
yield return (T)childOfT;
}
if (child.HasChildren) {
foreach (T descendant in Descendants<T>(child)) {
yield return descendant;
}
}
}
}
You can use the above function like:
var checkBox = (from c in myForm.Descendants<CheckBox>()
where c.TabIndex == 9
select c).FirstOrDefault();
That will get the first CheckBox anywhere within the form that has a TabIndex of 9. You can obviously use whatever criteria you want.
If you aren't a fan of LINQ query syntax, the above could be re-written as:
var checkBox = myForm.Descendants<CheckBox>()
.FirstOrDefault(x=>x.TabIndex==9);
Recursively search through your form's Controls collection.
void FindAndSayHi(Control control)
{
foreach (Control c in control.Controls)
{
Find(c.Controls);
if (c.TabIndex == 9)
{
MessageBox.Show("Hi");
}
}
}
void iterateControls(Control ctrl)
{
foreach(Control c in ctrl.Controls)
{
iterateControls(c);
}
}
You can make a method like this:
public static Control GetControl(Control.ControlCollection controlCollection, Predicate<Control> match)
{
foreach (Control control in controlCollection)
{
if (match(control))
{
return control;
}
if (control.Controls.Count > 0)
{
Control result = GetControl(control.Controls, match);
if (result != null)
{
return result;
}
}
}
return null;
}
...that is used like this:
Control control = GetControl(this.Controls, ctl => ctl.TabIndex == 9);
Note however that TabIndex is a tricky case, since it starts at 0 within each container, so there may be several controls in the same form having the same TabIndex value.
Either way, the method above can be used for checking pretty much any property of the controls:
Control control = GetControl(this.Controls, ctl => ctl.Text == "Some text");
I hate recursion, so I always use a stack for this sort of thing. This assigns a common event handler to the CheckedChanged event of every RadioButton control in the current control hierarchy:
Stack<Control> controlStack = new Stack<Control>();
foreach (Control c in this.Controls)
{
controlStack.Push(c);
}
Control ctl;
while (controlStack.Count > 0 && (ctl = controlStack.Pop()) != null)
{
if (ctl is RadioButton)
{
(ctl as RadioButton).CheckedChanged += new EventHandler(rb_CheckedChanged);
}
foreach (Control child in ctl.Controls)
{
controlStack.Push(child);
}
}
You could easily retrofit Josh Einstein's extension method to work this way.