Gathering textboxes created in design - c#

I added several textboxes by drag_n_dropping. Now I want to gather them all under a textbox array. I know how to create array of textboxes in code but not how to gather the textboxes created during design. Could anyone help please?

Sometimes the textboxes are not placed on the form directly but on a container control like a tab control or a split container. If you want to find all these textboxes, a recursion will help
private List<TextBox> _textboxes = new List<TextBox>();
private void GetTextBoxes(Control parent)
{
foreach (Control c in parent.Controls) {
var tb = c as TextBox;
if (tb != null) {
_textboxes.Add(tb);
} else {
GetTextBoxes(c);
}
}
}
Then you call GetTextBoxes by passing the form as argument
GetTextBoxes(this);
This is possible, since Form itself derives from Control.

This assumes your TextBoxes are within same GroupBox or Panel.
var groupOfTextBoxes = groupBox1.Controls.OfType<TextBox>();
MessageBox.Show(groupOfTextBoxes.Count().ToString());
var textBoxesWithinForm = this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>();
MessageBox.Show(textBoxesWithinForm.Count().ToString());
Requires using System.Linq;. Please note that textBoxesWithinForm will ignore TextBoxes that are within groupBox and vice versa.
Or like #Jeff suggests but instead of going thru this.Controls and comparing if Control is Textbox:
foreach (TextBox in this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>())
{
//add to your array
}

foreach (Control c in this.Controls)
{
if (c is TextBox)
{
//add to your array
}
}

Related

How to clear TextBoxes nested inside a TabControl, TabPage and 2 Panels?

The picture below represents a plug-in I am building.
Yellow = tabControl1; Orange = tabPage1; Blue = Main Panel (mainPanel); Green = 3 different panels inside the main panel (panel1, panel2 and panel3); White = TextBoxes (that I want to clear); DarkBlue = CheckBoxes corresponsing to the green panels
I am trying to clear any text from the TextBoxes that contain text and reset CheckBoxes when checked, with a button click.
I researched online and tried to accomplish this by the following way but it doesn't seem to be the correct way to handle this problem.
foreach (Control a in tabControl1.Controls)
{
foreach(Control b in tabPage1.Controls)
{
foreach (Control c in mainPanel.Controls)
{
foreach (Control d in panel1.Controls)
{
if (d is TextBox)
{
d.Text = " ";
}
if (d is CheckBox)
{
((CheckBox)d).Checked = false;
}
}
}
}
}
I have only shown panel1 here but tried doing the same thing for panel2 and 3 as well.
What exactly am I doing wrong here? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
You just need a simple recursive method that iterates all controls inside all child containers of a specified parent container, mainPanel, here.
If a control is of type TextBox or CheckBox, set its Text or Checked property accordingly:
(Note that you can also pass tabPage1 to the method, or any other ancestor)
ClearControls(panel1);
// or
ClearControls(tabPage1);
private void ClearControls(Control parent)
{
if ((parent == null) || (!parent.HasChildren))
return;
foreach (var ctl in parent.Controls.OfType<Control>())
{
if (ctl is TextBox txt) {
txt.Clear();
}
if (ctl is CheckBox chk) {
chk.Checked = false;
}
else {
if (ctl.HasChildren) {
ClearControls(ctl);
}
}
}
}
If you want to clear the TextBoxes and ComboBoxes inside of panel1 then you only need to loop through panel1's controls to do it. To handle any panel, you could just write a ClearPanel(Panel) function.
private void ClearPanel(Panel panel)
{
foreach (var ctrl in panel.Controls)
{
if (ctrl is TextBox tb)
{
tb.Clear();
}
else if (ctrl is CheckBox chkBx)
{
chkBx.Checked = false;
}
}
}
private void ClearPanel1Button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
ClearPanel(panel1);
}
Iterating through the controls in tabControl1, tabPage1, etc, etc adds unnecessary overhead if you already have a reference to the Panel you're dealing with. What's more, if any of the controls in the outer loops have an empty Controls collection then the inner loops won't execute. I suspect this might be why your code isn't working.
Note that the above solution will not handle any TextBox or ComboBox that is inside another container inside panel1. So, if panel1 had a GroupBox inside it which contained TextBoxes or ComboBoxes, they wouldn't be cleared. See the recursive solution below to handle that situation.
EDIT: After re-reading your question I thought maybe you want to clear all TextBox and CheckBox controls on the Form.
If you're needing to clear every TextBox or CheckBox on the Form, you can do this with recursion.
private void Clear(Control ctrl)
{
if (ctrl is TextBox tb)
{
tb.Clear();
}
if (ctrl is CheckBox chkBx)
{
chkBx.Checked = false;
}
foreach (Control child in ctrl.Controls)
{
Clear(child);
}
}
private void ClearButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Clear(this);
}
You could pass any Control to Clear(Control), so if you only wanted to do the TextBoxes and ComboBoxes on tabPage1 you could call Clear(tabPage1). This will clear all the TextBoxes and ComboBoxes on tabPage1, even if they're in a Panel or GroupBox or some other container.

How to access the controls in the TabPage of a TabControl

I have two Buttons in my Form and two TextBoxes inside a TabControl.
I'm not sure how I can save to the Clipboard the text of the TextBoxes using the Buttons.
To do this, we tried to assigned the same AccessibleName to the controls.
I worked on the code but I do not know how to access the TabPages of the TabControl.
Finally, does someone know of a better way to do that?
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private void SaveNumBot(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
foreach (Control c in this.Controls)
{
if (c.AccessibleName == ((Control)sender).AccessibleName)
{
if (c is TextBox)
{
Clipboard.SetDataObject(c.Text);
}
}
}
}
Use pattern matching:
if (c is TextBox textBox)
{
Clipboard.SetDataObject(textBox.Text);
}
You could modify your foreach loop:
foreach(TabPage tabPage in yourTabControl.Controls)
{
foreach (TextBox textBox in tabPage.Controls.OfType<TextBox>().Where(x=>x.AccessibleName == ((Control)sender).AccessibleName))
{
Clipboard.SetDataObject(textBox.Text);
}
}
with this loop you only search for Controls which are from the type Textbox.
Use OfType method to avoid InvalidCastExceptions.
If you have other Controls which inherit from TextBox in your Form I would recommend to add the line x.GetType()==typeof(TextBox) to the Where() method.
With the Where() method we only choose the items which have to same AccessibleName like our sender.
But if you have more textboxes with the same AccessibleName, this loop will run through all items and only choose the last text.
In this case i would recommend:
Clipboard.SetDataObject(yourTabPage.Controls.OfType<TextBox>()
.Where(x=>x.AccessibleName ==((Control)sender).AccessibleName))
.ToList()
.FirstOrDefault().Text);
Here we are going to have 1 text from the first texbox found in the Control. you could also select the Last()entry.

How can I shorten this repetitive C# TextBox.Clear code?

Been reading through the threads a lot recently as I am learning to code!
In essence all I know is self taught and very basic, so I would like to start becoming more professional
I would like to shorten this code down (in the simplest way possible) since I often end up with very repetitive code! Here is a primary example
private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
textBox1.Clear();
textBox2.Clear();
textBox3.Clear();
textBox4.Clear();
textBox5.Clear();
textBox6.Clear();
textBox7.Clear();
textBox8.Clear();
textBox9.Clear();
textBox10.Clear();
textBox11.Clear();
textBox12.Clear();
}
For context I can't clear all textboxes on my form since textBox13 always has a useful value that I can't have deleted!
EDIT * textBoxes 1 to 6 are in groupBox1, and textBoxes 7-12 are in groupBox2. This appears to be significant; I was just using the groupbox tool to make the program clear!
If anyone can help I would be truly grateful! Please keep in mind I am still a coding novice, so some features I am unfamiliar with.
Here is an image of the program to help!
Assuming all your textboxes name start in the format you displayed, you could use this:
foreach (Control control in Controls)
{
if (control.Name.StartsWith("textBox") && !control.Name.EndsWith("13") && control.GetType() == typeof(TextBox))
{
TextBox textBox = (TextBox)control;
textBox.Clear();
}
}
EDIT
If you want it to work with group boxes use this code by calling ClearTextBoxes (just write "ClearTextBoxes();")
private void ClearTextBoxes()
{
foreach (Control control in Controls)
{
ClearTextBox(control);
}
}
private void ClearTextBox(Control control)
{
if (control.GetType() == typeof(TextBox))
{
if (control.Name.StartsWith("textBox") && !control.Name.EndsWith("13"))
{
TextBox textBox = (TextBox)control;
textBox.Clear();
}
}
else if (control.GetType() == typeof(GroupBox))
{
GroupBox groupBox = (GroupBox)control;
foreach (Control groupBoxControl in groupBox.Controls)
{
ClearTextBox(groupBoxControl);
}
}
}
The current setting doesn not allow you to clear everything quickly because each variable, even if they're all of the same type and with similar name, is a different entity and you cannot iterate through them.
Anyway, you could group them in an array and iterate through them like this:
// Fill this array in an Init function
YourType[] textBoxes;
private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Iterate through the whole array except for the last element
for(int i=0; i<textBoxes.Length-1; i++)
{
textBoxes[i].Clear();
}
}
One possible solution would be store textboxes in list
List<TextBox> textBoxes
And then iterate through this collection using for or foreach loop and calling Clear() method.
Or use extension method ForEach()
textBoxes.ForEach(x => x.Clear());
The simplest way is to prepare a collection containing all of your textbox objects
var textBoxes = new List<TextBox> { textBox1,textBox2,textBox3};// fill in the rest
and just iterate with a 'foreach' on it
textBoxes.ForEach(textBox => textBox.Clear());
This is a simple suggestion.
You can also use reflection to make it more implicit but it doesn't worth it
Usually having too many of certain control can be a sign that you can consider a different type of control, but that doesn't seem to be the case based on the screenshot. You can use array:
foreach (var t in new[] { textBox1, textBox2, textBox3 })
t.Clear();
If the controls are directly in the form then something like:
foreach (Control c in this.Controls)
if (c is TextBox && c.Name != "textBox13")
c.Text = ""; // .Text = "" is what TextBox.Clear() does
but because the controls are inside other controls:
foreach (Control c in this.groupBox1.Controls) if (c is TextBox) c.Text = "";
foreach (Control c in this.groupBox2.Controls) if (c is TextBox) c.Text = "";
or:
foreach (var gb in new[] { groupBox1, groupBox2 })
foreach (Control c in gb.Controls)
if (c is TextBox) c.Text = "";

Iterating through textboxes using asp.net

I am building a page with asp.net. I have a form with a table that contains TextBoxes and a submit button. When the form is submitted, I want to grab all the text that was entered into the TextBoxes and operate on them. To do this, I have the following method:
protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
foreach (Control c in this.Controls)
{
if (c.GetType().Name == "TextBox")
{
TextBox tb = (TextBox)c;
sb.AppendLine(tb.Text);
}
}
Label1.Text = sb.ToString();
}
The problem with this is that the controls apparently doesn't include any of my textboxes. When I iterate through the controls and print out their names, the only one I get is "site_master." (I also tried Controls and Page.Controls instead of this.Controls).
Is there something wrong with my iterator? Is there another way in which I could iterate through all of the textboxes in the table or page? What is the best way to accomplish this?
Would it be too much to build a List<Textbox>, given you know all your textbox controls?
List<Textbox> txtBoxes = new List<Textbox>();
txtBoxes.Add(tb1);
txtBoxes.Add(tb2);
//etc..
Then you have a nice list to work with
If I knew the controls were all in a given containing control, I would simply poll the controls of that control. For example, this.Form.Controls. However, if they could be nested within other child controls, then you could recursively explore the depths from a common outer container.
private IEnumerable<T> FindControls<T>(Control parent) where T : Control
{
foreach (Control control in parent.Controls)
{
if (control is T)
yield return (T)control;
foreach (T item in FindControls<T>(control))
yield return item;
}
}
So this would allow you to retrieve all TextBox children.
List<TextBox> textBoxes = this.FindControls<TextBox>(this).ToList();
string output = string.Join(",", textBoxes.Select(tb => tb.Text));
I'm going to assume that you are using web forms ASP.NET. Typically you declare your controls on the aspx page using something similar to
<asp:TextBox ID="someId" runat="server/>
If you have done this then in your code behind your should just be able to reference the variable someId and the property Text to get/set the text in the control.
If you are building the controls dynamically on the server you should be able to stick them in a list and iterate through it. Make sure you are creating the controls and adding them to the table during the correct part of the page lifecycle. When you add them to a cell in the table you could also keep a reference to the control in a list and just enumerate through that list in your event handler.
Maybe something along the lines of (I didn't compile this so there are probably issues):
public class MyPage: Page
{
private List<TextBox> TxtBoxes = new List<TextBox>();
//registered for the preinit on the page....
public void PreInitHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
for(var i = 0; i < 2; i++)
{
var txtBox = new TextBox{Id = textBox+i};
//...add cell to table and add txtBox Control
TxtBoxes.Add(txtBox);
}
}
}

empty textbox controls after the data is inserted / saved/ submitted in a c# winform application

I need to empty all the textbox controls after the SAVE button is clicked but the user. I have around 10 of them. How do i clear text from them all simultaneously. I just know about:
textbox1.Text="";
But, if i do this, then i need to repeat this for the no. of textbox controls on my Form, that would be a labor task instead of programmer?
Please guide.
Try this
foreach(TextBox textbox in this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>())
{
textbox.Text = string.Empty;
}
If you want recursivly clear all textboxes use this function.
void ClearTextBoxes(Control control)
{
foreach(Control childControl in control.Controls)
{
TextBox textbox = childControl as TextBox;
if(textbox != null)
textbox.Text = string.Empty;
else if(childControl.Controls.Count > 0)
ClearTextBoxes(childControl);
}
}
If you have all the textboxes on a form without panels or group boxes, you can do this:
foreach (var conrol in Controls)
{
var textbox = conrol as TextBox;
if (textbox != null)
textbox.Clear();
}
If you have a panel, use panel.Controls instead.
You could use the Linq API described in the following article:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/linq/LinqToTree.aspx#linqforms
This allows you to apply Linq-to-XML style queries on Windows Forms. The following will clear all the TextBox controls that are descendants of 'this':
foreach(TextBox textbox in this.Descendants<TextBox>()
.Cast<TextBox>())
{
textbox.Text = string.Empty;
}
If you want to clear everything on the form, I would suggest a pair of utility function such as:
public static void ClearAllControls(Control.ControlCollection controls)
{
foreach (var control in controls)
ClearAllControls(control);
}
public static void ClearAllControls(Control control)
{
var textBox = control as TextBox
if (textBox != null)
{
textBox.Text = null;
return;
}
var comboBox = control as ComboBox;
if (comboBox != null)
{
comboBox.SelectedIndex = -1;
return;
}
// ...repeat blocks for other control types as needed
ClearAllControls(control.Controls);
}
Call the first method, passing the form's Controls collection, and it will recursively drill down through panels, groups, etc, clearing all the controls it knows about. You'll have to add a block for each different control type, but at least you only have to do it once. It's a bit brute-force, but it's not the kind of code that ends up running in a loop, and it runs plenty fast, anyway.
The final line, which does the recursion, will only be reached if the current control being worked on hasn't already proven to be one of the known types, so you don't have to worry about accidentally "drilling into" things like TextBoxes, looking for child controls that won't be there.

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