iterating controls on the form

mcgahanfl

I realize I can get a list of controls on the form by writing this.Contols; Is there a simple way to get the controls collection back sorted by tab order? thanks

Donald_a

I don't think there is a way built into the framework to do this - would probably require the use of some kind of sortable collection EG SortedList or ArrayList...

Corinna John

That seems to be a good start. List the Controls in the SortedList and write a custom comparer: //somewhere in the code SortedList myList = new SortedList(yourComparer, this.Controls.Count); foreach(Control ctl in this.Controls){ myList.Add(ctl); } //somewhere else class ControlComparer : IComparer { public bool Compare(object obj1, object obj2){ Control ctl1 = (Control)obj1; Control ctl2 = (Control)obj2; bool returnValue = false; //compare and set [returnValue] return returnValue; } }

Donald_a

I was thinking of something more like:

//Sorted list to hold all controls
SortedList ControlListByTabIndex = new SortedList();
			
//Loop over controls
foreach(Control CurrentControl in this.Controls)
{
    //Add to sortedlist, using the tabindex as the key, and the control itself as the value.
    ControlListByTabIndex.Add(CurrentControl.TabIndex, CurrentControl);
}

//You can now loop over the list, and it is ordered by TabIndex
for (int i = 0 ; i < ControlListByTabIndex.Count ; i++)
  {
    Console.WriteLine(((Control)ControlListByTabIndex.GetByIndex(i)).TabIndex);
    Console.WriteLine(((Control)ControlListByTabIndex.GetByIndex(i)).Name);
}

mcgahanfl

Thank you. It turns out that controls have a GetNextControl() property. This avoids the need to recursively iter throught tab controls and frame controls. thanks again.

mcgahanfl

Thank you. It turns out that controls have a GetNextControl() property. This avoids the need to recursively iter throught tab controls and frame controls.