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Checking Multiple textbox if they're null or whitespace

I have a form where I have lots of textboxes and all of them are required to be filled out. In C# how do I actually if check there are group of fields having a null or whitespace?
I am familiar with string.isNullOrWhiteSpace(string here) but I don't want to do multiple if statements of that, it would result in a bad code.
I am trying to avoid something like this
if(string.isNullOrWhiteSpace(string here)
|| string.isNullOrWhiteSpace(string here)
|| string.isNullOrWhiteSpace(string here))
{
// do something
}
Are there fix for this type of bad code?

You can query the controls collection of the form (or relevant container) and filter for textboxes and further query to see if any are empty (none should really have null values). Example:
var emptyTextboxes = from tb in this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>()
where string.IsNullOrEmpty(tb.Text)
select tb;
if (emptyTextboxes.Any())
{
// one or more textboxes are empty
}
You can do effectively the same thing using the fluent syntax.
bool isIncomplete = this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>().Any(tb => string.IsNullOrEmpty(tb.Text));
if (isIncomplete)
{
// do your work
}
For this code, you should be working with at least Visual Studio 2008 / C# 3 / .NET 3.5. Your project needs to have a reference to System.Core.dll (should have one by default) and you need a using System.Linq; directive in the class file.
Based upon your comments, consider another method if you are having trouble understanding or working with the linq version. You can certainly do this in an explicit loop (the Linq code will ultimately be a loop as well). Consider
bool isIncomplete = false;
foreach (Control control in this.Controls)
{
if (control is TextBox)
{
TextBox tb = control as TextBox;
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(tb.Text))
{
isIncomplete = true;
break;
}
}
}
if (isIncomplete)
{
}
Finally, this code is written as if all of the textboxes are in a single container. That container might be the form, a panel, etc. You will need to point to the appropriate container (eg., instead of this (the form) it might be this.SomePanel). If you are working with controls that are in multiple and perhaps nested containers, you will need to do more work to find them programmatically (recursive searching, explicit concatenation, etc.) or you might just preload the references into an array or other collection. For example
var textboxes = new [] { textbox1, textbox2, textbox3, /* etc */ };
// write query against textboxes instead of this.Controls
You said you have multiple GroupBox controls. If each GroupBox is loaded onto the form and not nested in another control, this may get you started.
var emptyTextboxes = from groupBox in this.Controls.OfType<GroupBox>()
from tb in groupBox.Controls.OfType<TextBox>()
where string.IsNullOrEmpty(tb.Text)
select tb;

That depends on what you consider "bad code." Depending on your requirements what text boxes are required to be filled out can vary. Further, even if all of the fields are required all of the time you still want to give friendly error messages letting people know which field they didn't fill out. There a variety of approaches to solving this issue depending on how you are rendering your form. Since you haven't specified any here's a very direct method for doing so.
var incompleteTextBoxes = this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>()
.Where(tb => string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(tb.Text));
foreach (var textBox in inCompleteTextBoxes)
{
// give user feedback about which text boxes they have yet to fill out
}

Yet another solution.
This will recursively travel the whole control Tree , and Check for null or empty text in all of the textboxes.
caveat -
If you have some fancy controls not inheriting from the standard Winforms textbox - check will not be performed
bool check(Control root,List<Control> nonFilled)
{
bool result =true;
if (root is TextBox && string.isNullOrEmpty(((TextBox)root).Text) )
{
nonFilled.Add(root);
return false;
}
foreach(Control c in root.Controls)
{
result|=check(c,nonFilled)
}
return result;
}
Usage :
List<Control> emptytextboxes=new List<Control>()
bool isOK=check(form, emptytextboxes);

Alternative to OverLibWrapper for displaying control tooltips in ASP.NET

I looked into a nice way to display tooltips dynamically and I found OverLibWrapper, which was exactly what I needed.
I have all the tooltip data stored in a custom configuration section, the tooltips are bound to their respective controls during Page_Load.
I did a quick test and worked fine. The problem came up when I realized that OverLibWrapper didn't work on masterpages. Our website has uses quite a few masterpages, so taking them out isn't an option.
I was wondering if there's anything like OverLibWrapper that I could use.
EDIT:
What I'm looking for is a control to display good-looking tooltips on mouseover preferably instantly like overlib (nothing fancy because I'm just displaying raw text) in a dynamic way, because the tooltip property in ASP.NET is not very pretty and takes a while to appear. For example let's say I have a collection of Messages:
class Message
{
string ctrlid, msgtodisplay;
}
And when the page is loaded:
TooltipManager manager;
foreach(var m in messages)
{
Tooltip tltp=new Tooltip;
m.ControlID=m.ctrlid;
m.Message=m.msgtodisplay;
manager.AddTooltip(tltp);
}
So basically something that offers the functionality of Tooltip and TooltipManager.

Take a look at this:
NotesTooltip
I think this will do what you need.
Have you thought about just writing your own? Sometimes I find the things out there by other people are never quite fit for my needs.

Well I finally solved my problem:
I've used this function to find any control (works with masterpages):
public static Control FindControlRecursive(Control root, string id)
{
if (id == string.Empty)
return null;
if (root.ID == id)
return root;
foreach (Control c in root.Controls)
{
Control t = FindControlRecursive(c, id);
if (t != null)
return t;
}
return null;
}
And this method:
public static void load(Page page, string pageFileName)
{
foreach (ConfiguracionElem elem in Configuracion.GetConfig(pageFileName).Tooltips)
{
WebControl ctrl = (WebControl)FindControlRecursive(page, elem.controlid);
if (ctrl == null)
throw new ControlNotFoundException("There's no control'"+elem.controlid+"'")
else
{
ctrl.Attributes.Add("onmouseover","return overlib('"+elem.message+"');");
ctrl.Attributes.Add("onmouseout","return nd();");
}
}
}
I added the Overlib library manually to a script folder, then I iterated through my Custom Configuration Section (where my tooltip data is stored) to add the javascript attributes dynamically.

Trouble with FindControl and dynamicly created controls

Example code:
var div = new HtmlGenericControl("div");
div.Controls.Add(new Literal() { ID = "litSomeLit" });
var lit = (Literal)div.FindControl("litSomeLit");
Assert.IsNotNull(lit);
This code fails the assert, because lit is null. Debugging shows that div.Controls definitely contains a literal with ID of "litSomeLit." My questions are "Why?" and "Is there any way to get a control of a specific ID without doing a recursive search of div.Controls[] by hand one element at a time?"
The reason I'm doing things this way is that my actual application is not so straightforward- a method I'm writing is given a complex control with several subcontrols in a number of possible configurations. I need to access a specific control several layers down (eg, the control with ID "txtSpecificControl" might be at StartingControl.Controls[0].Controls[2].Controls[1].Controls[3]). Normally I could just do FindControl("txtSpecificControl"), but that does not seem to work when the controls were just dynamically created (as in the above example code).

Near as I can tell, there is no way to do what I'm trying to accomplish without adding the control to the page. If I had to guess, I'd say that FindControl uses the UniqueID property of the control, which generally contains the IDs of all the controls above the current one (eg OuterControlID$LowerControlId$TargetControlID). That would only get generated when the control actually gets added to the page.
Anyway, here's an implementation of recursive depth-first-search FindControl that'll work when the control is not attached to the page yet:
public static Control FindControl(Control parent, string id)
{
foreach (Control control in parent.Controls)
{
if (control.ID == id)
{
return control;
}
var childResult = FindControl(control, id);
if (childResult != null)
{
return childResult;
}
}
return null;
}

Change your code to
var div = new HtmlGenericControl("div");
Page.Controls.Add(div);
div.Controls.Add(new Literal() { ID = "litSomeLit" });
var lit = (Literal)div.FindControl("litSomeLit");
As far as i know FindControl only works when the control is in the visual tree of the page.

When you confirmed that the control was in the Controls collection, did you do that by inspecting the collection directly? FindControl() may not work in this context.
When you debug the test, is the var lit null? If so, you may have to access the member by item index instead of using the FindControl() method.

Iterating through textbox controls in a panel C#

I have seen many others with similar problems but I cannot find the flaw in my logic here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have a Panel which I have added numerous label and textbox controls to, ie:
myPanel.Controls.Add(txtBox);
These controls are created and added in a method called previous to the iteration method.
I want to iterate through each textbox and use its Text property as a parameter in another method but I am not having any luck. Here is my attempt to iterate:
public void updateQuestions()
{
try
{
foreach (Control c in editQuestionsPanel.Controls)
{
if (c is TextBox)
{
TextBox questionTextBox = (TextBox)c;
string question = questionTextBox.Text;
writeNewQuestionToTblQuestions(question);
}
}
}
catch (Exception err)
{
Console.WriteLine(err.Message);
}
}
The problem I am having is that the controls are not in the Panel when I arrive at this updateQuestions() method. Here is the process involved:
A commandButton is clicked and the questions are read from a DB, for each question a method is called which adds 2 labels and a textbox to editQuestionsPanel.Controls. This panel is inside a PlaceHolder which is then made visible.
When a button inside the PlaceHolder is clicked, the updateQuestions() method is called and the editQuestionsPanel.Controls.Count = 1. As there are approx 12 questions in the DB it should be around 36. The one control inside the Panel is of type:
System.Web.UI.LiteralControl
It contains no controls.
I am sure that somwhere in the lifecycle the Panel's controls are being cleared but I do not know how to step thru the life cycle. I have a Page_load method which is called as soon as a button is clicked but once the button which calls updateQuestions() is clicked the editQuestionsPanel.Controls.Count is already back to 1 so it must be cleared before this but I do not know how to correct this...
Any help you can give to help me solve this would be greatly appreciated - its killing me!

This selects from collection controls only that which are of type TextBox.
(the same as control is TextBox or (control as TextBox) != null)
If controls are contained in editQuestionsPanel.Controls:
using System.Linq;
IEnumerable<TextBox> textBoxes = editQuestionsPanel.Controls.OfType<TextBox>();
foreach (TextBox textBox in textBoxes)
{
// do stuff
}
To select all child controls use next extension method:
public static IEnumerable<T> GetChildControls<T>(this Control control) where T : Control
{
var children = control.Controls.OfType<T>();
return children.SelectMany(c => GetChildControls<T>(c)).Concat(children);
}
Using:
IEnumerable<TextBox> textBoxes = editQuestionsPanel.GetChildControls<TextBox>();

When you add controls dynamically, you need to do that on every request - asp.net doesn't do that for you!
Add the controls in the Init or Load phase, then they will get populated with the postback values.

A frequently made mistake: Container.Controls only contains the first level child controls in this container. That is: TextBox1 in PanelA, PanelA in PanelB, you can't get TextBox1 in PanelB.Controls.
My solution is to write an extension method:
public static IEnumerable<Control> AllControls(this Control ctl)
{
List<Control> collection = new List<Control>();
if (ctl.HasControls())
{
foreach (Control c in ctl.Controls)
{
collection.Add(c);
collection = collection.Concat(c.AllControls()).ToList();
}
}
return collection;
}
Now TextBox1 is in PanelB.AllControls(). To filter all controls with type, using PanelB.AllControls().OfType<TextBox>()

If the other answers don't help, try doing your code but add recursivity. Your code would not work if it's editQuestionsPanel => Panel => Textbox

You can do something like this instead:
var questions = from tb in editQuestionsPanel.Controls.OfType<TextBox>()
select tb.Text;
foreach(var question in questions)
{
writeNewQuestionToTblQuestions(question);
}

Try this
int Count = 0;
foreach (Control ctr in Panel1.Controls)
{
if (ctr is TextBox)
Count++;
}

How do I avoid .Parent.Parent.Parent. etc. when referencing control hierarchies?

I'm trying to fix this ugly code.
RadGrid gv = (RadGrid) (((Control) e.CommandSource).Parent.Parent.Parent.Parent.Parent);
I often need to find the first grid that is the parent of the parent of... etc of a object that just raised an event.
The above tends to break when the layout changes and the number of .Parents increase or decreases.
I don't necessarily have a control Id, so I can't use FindControl().
Is there a better way to find the 1st parent grid?

Control parent = Parent;
while (!(parent is RadGrid))
{
parent = parent.Parent;
}

If you really have to find the grid, then you might something like this:
Control ct = (Control)e.CommandSource;
while (!(ct is RadGrid)) ct = ct.Parent;
RadGrid gv = (RadGrid)ct;
But maybe you can explain why you need a reference to the grid? Maybe there is another/better solution for your problem.

I'm not familiar with the API that you are using, but can you do something like:
Control root = ((Control)e.CommandSource);
while(root.Parent != null)
{
// must start with the parent
root = root.Parent;
if (root is RadGrid)
{
// stop at the first grid parent
break;
}
}
// might throw exception if there was no parent that was a RadGrid
RadGrid gv = (RadGrid)root;

If you have control of the Parent's code, you could use simple recursion to do it, I'd think. Something like:
public Control GetAncestor(Control c)
{
Control parent;
if (parent = c.Parent) != null)
return GetAncestor(parent);
else
return c;
}
I make no claims as to how well that will work, but it should get the idea across. Navigate up the parent chain as far as it goes until there is no parent, then return that object back up the recursion chain. It's brute force, but it will find the first parent no matter how high it is.