Referencing components with index

[sysrev]

If I'm in the wrong place or this is a stupid question I apologise in advance. I am having to write a data acquisition program in .NET (C#) before I’ve had time to learn it which is making for some interesting code. What I would really like to do is reference a group of 24 progress bar components within a for/next loop using the index of the loop. Does anyone know how to do this? The code I use at the moment is very inelegant and bugs me. Would appreciate any pointers (sorry ‘bout pun)

Ted Edwards

[led mike]

Wow Ted, that just sounds horrible. But given your situation:

sysrev wrote:

before I’ve had time to learn it

and

sysrev wrote:

a group of 24 progress bar components

With that situation I would go with "if it works, I don't care".

[sysrev]

But I'll need to do it again somewhere - and again, and again.........

Ted Edwards

[Robert Rohde]

Hi, hard to give a good answer without knowing your exact situation. You could add all progress bars to a List. After you have done this once you can iterate the list with for/foreach or whatever technique you like. Robert

[sysrev]

Thanks for the suggestion Robert. The progress bars display the output of a pressure sensor over a 24 hour period. When I get a new reading, I shift values chronologically "down" one bar and put the new value in the "top" (most recent) bar. The coding begs for an iterative loop but I don't know how to address the bars name property with the index. So I ended up using a switch construct which works okay but is awkward to maintain. The List class is new to me and on your suggestion I had a quick look at it. I must say, it does not look promising but will try it out if I can.

Ted

[Robert Rohde]

Hi, I'll try to outline what I meant:

//Field declaration in the Form/UserCotrol
private List _bars;

//somewhere after the InitializeComponents call
_bars = new List(new ProgressBar[] { pb1, pb2, pb3, ... });

//when you want to update the bars
for (int i = 0; i < 24; i++)
{
_bars[i] = someArrayWithTheValues[i];
}

With the mod operator you could also easily switch which hour should be displayed at the top: int hourToDisplayAtTop = 4;

for (int i = 0; i < 24; i++)
{
_bars[i] = someArrayWithTheValues[(i + hourToDisplayAtTop) % 24];
}

Robert

[sysrev]

I think I can see what you are suggesting and am trying to experiment with it in a new application as here: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Forms; namespace IndexComponents { public partial class Form1 : Form { private ProgressBar pb1; private ProgressBar pb2; private ProgressBar pb3; private List _bars; public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); int[] someArrayWithTheValues = new int[3] { 1, 2, 3 }; //Field declaration in the Form/UserCotrol /// private List _bars; //somewhere after the InitializeComponents call /// _bars = new List(new ProgressBar[] { pb1, pb2, pb3 });//when you want to update the bars _bars = new List(new ProgressBar[] { pb1, pb2, pb3 });//when you want to update the bars for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) { _bars[i] = someArrayWithTheValues[i]; } //With the mod operator you could also easily switch which hour should be displayed at the top: int hourToDisplayAtTop = 2; for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) { _bars[i] = someArrayWithTheValues[(i + hourToDisplayAtTop) % 24]; } } } } I am now working on the last two(I hope!) build error which are flagged within the two for loops as below: Error 1 Cannot convert type 'int' to 'System.Windows.Forms.ProgressBar' Error 2 Cannot implicitly convert type 'int' to 'System.Windows.Forms.ProgressBar' Ted Edwards

[Robert Rohde]

Replace _bars[i] = ... with _bars[i].Value = ... (Sorry, my mistake) Robert

[sysrev]

That's great. It all works - I can experiment further now I have a working example. Thanks for your help.

Ted