Get a Windows Forms control by name in C

Question

I have a ToolStripMenuItem called myMenu  How can I access this like so      Normally  I would do     this myMenu    etc      But how do I access it like this     String name   myMenu  this name      This is because I am dynamically generating ToolStripMenuItems from an XML file and need to reference MenuItems by their dynamically generated names

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string name    the name you know    Control ctn   this Controls name    ctn Text    Example

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Control GetControlByName string Name        foreach Control c in this Controls          if c Name    Name              return c       return null      Disregard this  I reinvent wheels

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One of the best way is a single row of code like this   In this example we search all PictureBox by name in a form  PictureBox   picSample                         PictureBox this Controls Find PIC SAMPLE NAME  true     Most important is the second paramenter of find   if you are certain that the control name exists you can directly use it     PictureBox picSample                             PictureBox this Controls Find PIC SAMPLE NAME  true  0

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this Controls  name      This is the actual code that is ran   public virtual Control this string key        get               if   string IsNullOrEmpty key                         int index   this IndexOfKey key               if  this IsValidIndex index                                 return this index                                   return null            vs   public Control   Find string key  bool searchAllChildren        if  string IsNullOrEmpty key                 throw new ArgumentNullException  key   SR GetString  FindKeyMayNotBeEmptyOrNull               ArrayList list   this FindInternal key  searchAllChildren  this  new ArrayList         Control   array   new Control list Count       list CopyTo array  0       return array     private ArrayList FindInternal string key  bool searchAllChildren  Control ControlCollection controlsToLookIn  ArrayList foundControls        if   controlsToLookIn    null      foundControls    null                 return null            try               for  int i   0  i  lt  controlsToLookIn Count  i                          if   controlsToLookIn i     null   amp  amp  WindowsFormsUtils SafeCompareStrings controlsToLookIn i  Name  key  true                                 foundControls Add controlsToLookIn i                                    if   searchAllChildren                        return foundControls                    for  int j   0  j  lt  controlsToLookIn Count  j                          if    controlsToLookIn j     null   amp  amp   controlsToLookIn j  Controls    null    amp  amp   controlsToLookIn j  Controls Count  gt  0                                 foundControls   this FindInternal key  searchAllChildren  controlsToLookIn j  Controls  foundControls                                     catch  Exception exception                if  ClientUtils IsSecurityOrCriticalException exception                         throw                      return foundControls

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You can do the following    private ToolStripMenuItem getToolStripMenuItemByName string nameParam             foreach  Control ctn in this Controls                         if  ctn is ToolStripMenuItem                                      if  ctn Name   nameParam                                                   return ctn                                                                return null

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Since you re generating them dynamically  keep a map between a string and the menu item  that will allow fast retrieval      in class scope private readonly Dictionary lt string  ToolStripMenuItem gt   menuItemsByName   new Dictionary lt string  ToolStripMenuItem gt         in your method creating items ToolStripMenuItem createdItem        menuItemsByName Add   lt name here gt    createdItem       to access it ToolStripMenuItem menuItem    menuItemsByName   lt name here gt

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You can use find function in your Form class  If you want to cast  Label    TextView      etc  in this way you can use special features of objects  It will be return Label object    Label this Controls Find name true  0     name  item name of searched item in the form  true  Search all Children boolean value

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A simple solution would be to iterate through the Controls list in a foreach loop  Something like this   foreach  Control child in Controls           Code that executes for each control      So now you have your iterator  child  which is of type Control  Now do what you will with that  personally I found this in a project I did a while ago in which it added an event for this control  like this   child MouseDown    new MouseEventHandler dragDown

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Have a look at the ToolStrip Items collection  It even has a find method available

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Using the same approach of Philip Wallace  we can do like this       public Control GetControlByName Control ParentCntl  string NameToSearch                if  ParentCntl Name    NameToSearch              return ParentCntl           foreach  Control ChildCntl in ParentCntl Controls                        Control ResultCntl   GetControlByName ChildCntl  NameToSearch               if  ResultCntl    null                  return ResultCntl                    return null          Example       public void doSomething                      TextBox myTextBox    TextBox  this GetControlByName this   mytextboxname                myTextBox Text    Hello            I hope it help

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Use the Control ControlCollection Find method   Try this   this Controls Find

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Assuming you have the menuStrip object and the menu is only one level deep  use   ToolStripMenuItem item   menuStrip Items      OfType lt ToolStripMenuItem gt         SelectMany it   gt  it DropDownItems OfType lt ToolStripMenuItem gt          SingleOrDefault n   gt  n Name     MyMenu      For deeper menu levels add more SelectMany operators in the statement   if you want to search all menu items in the strip then use  ToolStripMenuItem item   menuStrip Items      Find  MyMenu  true       OfType lt ToolStripMenuItem gt         Single      However  make sure each menu has a different name to avoid exception thrown by key duplicates   To avoid exceptions you could use FirstOrDefault instead of SingleOrDefault   Single  or just return a sequence if you might have Name duplicates

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this Controls Find name   searchAllChildren  doesn t find ToolStripItem because ToolStripItem is not a Control    using SWF   System Windows Forms    using NUF   NUnit Framework    namespace workshop findControlTest         NUF TestFixture       public class FormTest            NUF Test public void Find menu                      prepare               var fileTool   new SWF ToolStripMenuItem               fileTool Name    fileTool              fileTool Text    File               var menuStrip   new SWF MenuStrip               menuStrip Items Add fileTool               var form   new SWF Form               form Controls Add menuStrip                     execute               var ctrl   form Controls Find  fileTool   true                     not found                NUF Assert That ctrl Length  NUF Is EqualTo 0

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Assuming you have Windows Form Form1 as the parent form which owns the menu you ve created  One of the form s attributes is named  Menu  If the menu was created programmatically  it should be the same  and it would be recognized as a menu and placed in the Menu attribute of the Form   In this case  I had a main menu called File  A sub menu  called a MenuItem under File contained the tag Open and was named menu File Open  The following worked  Assuming you     So you don t have to fully reference the objects  using System Windows Forms      More stuff before the real code line  but irrelevant to this discussion   MenuItem my menuItem    MenuItem Form1 Menu MenuItems  menu File Open        Now you can do what you like with my menuItem

[c#] Get a Windows Forms control by name in C#

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