Accessing Form Panels Programmatically

[skip2004]

Hi,

Hopefully this is an easy question and there is a simple solution!

Is it possible to programmatically accessing the panels in a windows form?

My form has 5 panels, so if I wanted to loop through the controls in all 5 panels I could, for example, do:

For Each objControl In panel1.Controls
objControl.DoSomething....
Next

For Each objControl In panel2.Controls
objControl.DoSomething....
Next

For Each objControl In panel3.Controls
objControl.DoSomething....
Next

etc, etc for all 5.

Is there anyway I can programmatically set the panel I wish to loop through to save the need to repeat the code for each of the 5 panels as detailed above?

I'm certain it must be possible, and hopefully I'm just missing something obvious!

Thanks in advance,
skip

 

[chrissie1]

look at this thread

thread796-1432020


Christiaan Baes
Belgium

My Blog

 

[skip2004]

Thanks.

I was hoping there would be a more direct approach at getting to the panel rather than having to loop through all the controls.

 

[chrissie1]

in the bottom is mentions a faq look at that.

Christiaan Baes
Belgium

My Blog

 

[skip2004]

Thanks Christiaan, that is an interesting article.

Code works fine on controls added at design time, but does not work on dynamic controls.

The form I have is built up of (mainly) dynamic controls, and it's those I'd like to retrieve by name.

Do you know of a way of retrieving dynamic controls using the System.Reflection.FieldInfo method?

Many thanks,
skip

 

[RiverGuy]

Are you setting the .Name property of your dynamically created controls?

 

[skip2004]

Yes, the .Name property is being set.

I think the limitation of the Reflection method is that it doesn't locate dynamically created controls - hoping that isn't the case though.

Thanks,
skip

 

[chrissie1]

Nope it won't work on dynamically created objects, and why should it? You created them so you know what you created, right.


Christiaan Baes
Belgium

My Blog

 

[RiverGuy]

Ah, I missed the part where you guys were talking about reflection. I don't see looping through the controls collection as such a big deal. If you've got hundreds of controls on your form, you're going to be slow for other reasons than the loop.

 

[skip2004]

The controls are dynically built based on some sql table rows - so I don't create them as such.

I was wanting the best way to get to specific control(s) without having to loop through the controls collection - I thought he relection method may be quicker/more effecient.

Thanks,
skip