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Creating Dynamic Controller Names in C# with WinForms for TableLayoutPanel

While working on a small app that pulls test cases, runs, and results from an SQL Server Database, I encountered a dilemma in my methodology for attempting to create dynamic controller names in a TableLayoutPanel in WinForms. I am creating the rows dynamically when the user chooses the particular test case, and from there the TableLayoutPanel will open another window with the test steps preloaded and two radio buttons to indicate whether or not the test passed. My issue is that when I select one of the radio buttons on the right of the step, I get the same console read every single time. I need to be able to determine which exact radio button the user has pressed so I can therefore determine what row it's in and subsequently what test either passed or failed. My main code is as follows:
FormManualTest.cs (section when adding to the TableLayoutPanel)
private void addRowToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs anotherEvent)
{
tableLayoutTest.RowStyles.Clear(); // Clear row styles to ensure a clean start when adding to the TableLayoutPanel
List<RadioButton> listOfRadioControls = new List<RadioButton>(); // Create array of radio buttons
List<UserCustomStep> listOfStepControls = new List<UserCustomStep>(); // Create array of custom controls
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
UserCustomStep step = new UserCustomStep(Counter, "Step: " + i + " Push the button to elicit a response."); // Creates new user custom step control instance
RadioButton pass = new RadioButton();
pass.Text = "Pass";
pass.AutoSize = true;
RadioButton fail = new RadioButton();
fail.Text = "Fail";
fail.AutoSize = true;
fail.Margin = new Padding(3,3,20,3); // Needed to see the fail button without having to scroll over
listOfStepControls.Add(step); // Add step to UserCustomStep array
listOfRadioControls.Add(pass); // Add radio buttons to the RadioButton array
listOfRadioControls.Add(fail);
listOfRadioControls[i * 2].CheckedChanged += (s, e) => // Subscribes the pass radio button to listen for when a user has clicked on it
{
Console.WriteLine("Pass " + i + " was clicked");
};
listOfRadioControls[(i * 2) + 1].CheckedChanged += (s, e) => // Subscribes the fail radio button to listen for when a user has clicked on it
{
Console.WriteLine("Fail " + i + " was clicked");
};
tableLayoutTest.Controls.Add(listOfStepControls[i], 0, i); // Adds CustomStep to first column
tableLayoutTest.Controls.Add(listOfRadioControls[i*2], 1, i); // Adds Pass Radio Button to second column
tableLayoutTest.Controls.Add(listOfRadioControls[(i * 2) + 1], 2, i); // Add Fail Raido Button to third column
Counter++; // Increment couter to add subsequent steps underneath the previous ones.
}
}
Screenshots of App with Console Readout:
After Test Case Has Been Clicked and Radio Button Has Been Pressed
(From clicking this I would expect the console to read "Pass 1 was clicked")
Console Read:
Click Fail Button:
(I know from this image below that since the Pass button doesn't remain clicked I'm somehow using the same controller for all 5 of them)
Console Read
So from all of these issues that I've been presented with, I know that I'm somehow using the same controller for all 5 instances regardless of the fact that I'm storing everything in a controller array and grabbing from there. The for loop will have to be converted to a for each loop later, but that still doesn't solve my issue. I believe that if I could say something like:
RadioButton (pass+id) = new RadioButton();
or something similar while looping through to dynamically create the name for the controls, then each one would be a completely separate control and I could go from there. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I come from a heavy web background so my normal skills to remedy this in JS land aren't coming in handy as of right now. Thanks again for the assistance.

The Name property is optional, you don't need to specify it and it doesn't need to be unique. You can use property Tag for your own purpose (you can assign there ID or event instance of some object).
However you can also create your own control/usercontrol which encapsulate the whole row, and you can declare your own properties exactly for your purpose.

How to prevent programmatically added controls to wpf form dissapearing after closing the windows or rebuild the program?

This code is used to generate radio button inside a window for each time the the "Add_list" button is clicked. The problem is whenever I close the windows or rebuild the program, every radio button that has been added by clicking the "Add_list" button disappear.
private void Add_list(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
// add radio button to the list
string filename = File_name.Text;
sp_list.Children.Add(new RadioButton
{
Margin = new Thickness(8, 0, 0, 0),
Content = filename
});
string [] array = { l_field.Text,width.Text,weight.Text, Concrete_tempreature.Text };
myAL.Add(array);
foreach (object obj in myAL)
{
Console.WriteLine(obj);
}
}

The question here is - why do you expect it work this way?
Nowhere in your code do you attempt to store the state of your window. WPF doesn't store window states - you need to implement this yourself.

Activating/Deactivating buttons from config file C# (WinForms)

Let's say that my program have max 8 buttons and I should be able to switch them on/off (visible/hidden) according to my settings in configuration file.
My chosen buttons should be then visible in two rows (if more than 4) or one row (cnt<=4) on the form leaving no gap between them.(I mean when 1,2,3,4 are active they would be in the first row same 1,2,5,8 is active so the 5 will take place of the button 3 and 8 will take the 4th place)
<add key="butactive" value="1;3;4;8"/>
<add key="but1" value="START"/>
<add key="but2" value="END"/>
<add key="but3" value="PAUSE"/>
<add key="but4" value="RESET"/>
...
The program should be able to determine from "butactive" key which of those buttons will be visible and then change their Text property and add specific action which is also taken from config file.
private void Form2_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
radButton1.Text = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["but1"];
radButton2.Text = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["but2"];
radButton3.Text = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["but3"];
radButton4.Text = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["but4"];
...
radButton1.Click += getAction(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["but1a"]);
radButton2.Click += getAction(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["but2a"]);
...
}
Any idea how to select needed buttons when the form loads and place them in desired positions?

You can use a FlowLayoutPanel as a container for your buttons. If you size it correctly everything you need to do is set the visibility of the buttons and they will arrange themselves as you need:
radButton1.Visible = (bool)ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["butactive1"];
radButton2.Visible = (boll)ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["butactive2"];
...
As for the action, you can use the same event handler for all the buttons and execute whatever you need based on the button that was pressed and what action you have defined:
radButton1.Click += buttonClickHandler;
radButton2.Click += buttonClickHandler;
private void buttonClickHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var button = sender as Button;
var action = getAction(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[button.Text + "a"];
//Execute whatever you want here based on action
}

That piece of code you have there is not good, you are creating dependencies on config names with hard codded strings, that is not a good practice at all, if you can access Properties.Default I suggest you to go that way.
For the buttons position you can mess around with positions, for instance you can switch button 3 and 5 positions like this in windows forms:
radButton5.Position = radButton3.Position
But that is not a good approach, what I advice you is to cut that dependency in button numbers out, you can for instance create all buttons hidden and always show the first buttons, the method "getAction" will be a great help in that approach and its not to hard to implement the behavior.
A Scratch (pseudo code) of what you should do would be something like this:
// Get the active buttons from configuration (eg var will be a list of the active buttons names)
var activeButtons = getActiveButtons();
var textBoxNumber = 0
foreach(var button in activeButtons)
{
textBoxNumber++;
TextBox tbx = this.Controls.Find("radButton" + textBoxNumber.ToString(), true).FirstOrDefault() as TextBox;
if(tbx != null)
tbx.Text = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[button];
}

Adding a twin tabPage to tabControl through a user command

I'm a newbie in c# and probably going to ask a very easy question, but I've not been able to find anything on the web to help.
I have a tabControl with a TabPage which is containing a TextBox object; this object, when the event "Text changed" is invoked, will perform the change of the parent tabPage's name.
The textbox where I typed "text changed by me" has a method which is managing changing the name of the tabPage:
private void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (this.textBox1.Text != "")
this.tabControl2.SelectedTab.Text = this.textBox1.Text;
else
this.tabControl2.SelectedTab.Text = "(no name)";
}
Into the current page menu is contained a control to add a new page, which runs this method when the user click on it:
private void addNewPageToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
int numPagine;
string strPagine;
numPagine = this.tabControl2.TabCount;
strPagine = numPagine.ToString();
this.tabControl2.TabPages.Add("new page" + strPagine);
}
...and here is the output, which is expected since I'm just asking to add a new empty tabPage:
So, my question is: how can I make possible that when the user is clicking on "Add new page", rather than creating an empty new tabPage the program is rather creating a page like the first one (i.e. containing a textbox into the same position which has a method to change the text of the parent tabPage that I have just created?

Here is an example.
//..
// create the new page
TabPage tpNew = new TabPage("new page..");
// add it to the tab
this.tabControl2.TabPages.Add(tpNew);
// create one labe with text and location like label1
Label lbl = new Label();
lbl.Text = label1.Text;
lbl.Location = label1.Location;
// create a new textbox..
TextBox tbx = new TextBox();
tbx.Location = textBox1.Location;
tpNew.Controls.Add(lbl);
tpNew.Controls.Add(tbx);
// add code to the new textbox via lambda code:
tbx.TextChanged += ( (sender2, evArgs) =>
{
if (tbx.Text != "")
this.tabControl2.SelectedTab.Text = tbx.Text;
else
this.tabControl2.SelectedTab.Text = "(no name)";
} );
For more complicated layout you may want to consider creating a user control..
You also may want to create the first page with this code; the, of course with real values for text and positions!
For creating a UserControl you go to the project tag and right click Add-UserControl-UserControl and name it, maybe myTagPageUC. Then you can do layout on it like on a form. A rather good example is right here on MSDN
The problem is that is has no connection to the form, meaning you'll have to code all sorts of references to make it work..
I'm not really sure if you may not be better off writing a complete clonePage method instead. It could work like the code above, but would loop over the Controls of the template page and check on the various types to add the right controls..
It really depends on what is more complicated: the Layout or the ties between the pages and the form and its other controls..

Making an indexed control array?

Has C# indexed control arrays or not? I would like to put a "button array" for example with 5 buttons which use just one event handler which handles the index of all this 5 controls (like VB6 does). Else I have to write for each of these 5 buttons one extra event handler. And if I have 100 buttons, I need 100 event handlers? I mean something like that:
TextBox1[i].Text="Example";
It could make coding definitely easier for me to work with control arrays. Now I have seen, that C# at least has no visible array functionality on user controls and no "index" property on the user controls. So I guess C# has no control arrays, or I must each element call by known name.
Instead of giving 100 TextBoxes in a for loop 100 incrementing values, I have to write:
TextBox1.Text = Value1;
TextBox2.Text = Value2;
...
...
TextBox100.Text = Value100;
A lot of more work + all these 100 event handlers each for one additional TextBox extra.

I know I'm a little late to this party, but this solution will work:
Make a global array:
TextBox[] myTextBox;
Then in your object's constructor, after the call to
InitializeComponent();
initialize your array:
myTextBox = new TextBox[] {TextBox1, TextBox2, ... };
Now you can iterate your array of controls:
for(int i = 0; i < myTextBox.Length; i++)
myTextBox[i].Text = "OMG IT WORKS!!!";
I hope this helps!
Pete

As I mentioned in comment to a solution by HatSoft, C# Winforms does not allow you to create control arrays like old VB6 allowed us. The nearest I think we can get to is what HatSoft and Bert Evans in their posts have shown.
One thing that I hope would satisfy your requirement is the event handler, you get a common event handler and in the event handler when you typecast the "sender" you get the control directly just like you would in VB6
C#
TextBox textBox = sender as TextBox;
VB6
TextBox textBox = TextBox1[i];
So the only trouble you might have is wiring those 100 TextBoxes to a single event handler, if you are not creating the controls dynamically through code rather creating it manually at design time then all one can suggest is group them in a container like say Panel. Then on Form Load wire them all up to a single event handler like this:
foreach (Control control in myTextBoxPanel.Controls)
{
if(control is TextBox)
control.TextChanged += new EventHandler(control_TextChanged);
}

Just create one handler and point all the buttons to it.
var ButtonHandler = (sender, args) => {
var clicked = (Button)sender;
if (clicked.Text == "whatever")
//do stuff
else
//do other stuff
};
button1.Click += ButtonHandler;
button2.Click += ButtonHandler;
Alternatively, if you are creating controls in code, you could use one of the techniques specified in this answer.

Instead of giving 100 TextBoxes in a for loop 100 incrementing values, I have to write:
for(int i = 0; i <100; i++)
{
TextBox t = new TextBox(){ Id = "txt_" + i, Value = "txt_" + i};
t.TextChanged += new System.EventHandler(this.textBox_Textchanged);
Page.Controls.Add(t);
}
//and for event on TextChanged
private void textBox_Textchanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
TextBox textBox = sender as TextBox;
if (textBox != null)
{
////
}
}

Another thing to note: if you really need to edit 100 strings on one form, you should probably think about whether 100 text boxes is really the best way to do it. Perhaps a ListView, DataGridView, or PropertyGrid would be better suited.
This applies almost any time you think you need a huge array of controls.

If you are working with Web Forms and not MVC, you can acces a collection of controls on the page as shown in Using the Controls Collection in an ASP.NET Web Page. Essentially the controls collection is a tree with the page hosting the first level of child controls and some items having children of their own. See How to: Locate the Web Forms Controls on a Page by Walking the Controls Collection for an example of how to follow the tree.
Also, see How to: Add Controls to an ASP.NET Web Page Programmatically.
You can use the same event handler for multiple items as long as the signature required is the same.
For Windows Forms this is nearly identical since they're based on similar architectural models, but you'll want Control.Controls Property and How to: Add Controls to Windows Forms.

Keeping it simple:
TextBox[] keybox = new TextBox[16]; //create an array
for (int i=0; i<16; i++)
{
keybox[i] = new TextBox(); //initialize (create storage for elements)
keybox[i].Tag = i; //Tag prop = index (not available at design time)
keybox[i].KeyDown += keybox_down; //define event handler for array
}
private void keybox_down(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
int index = (int)((TextBox)sender).Tag //get index of element that fired event
...
}