Creating Controls At Runtime using a Variable Name

[JCreationsInc]

I am making a skin program that will allow a user to preview his/her progress on a form created programatically. Well what I was wondering is if any knows a way of creating the controls for that form using a string for the name??

 

Dim ProgramName as String

ProgramName = "PoopList"

Dim ProgramName as New ComboBox
ProgramName.Show

 

Anybody got any ideas??

[Heiko]

Are you talking of the name property or the name of the variable that points to the object?

[georg]

JCreationsInc

 

Here is something to get you started:

 

   Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
       Call ComboCreator()
   End Sub

   Private Sub ComboCreator()
       Dim x As Integer
       Dim sProgramName As String = "PoopList"
       For x = 1 To 10
           Dim cmbProgramName As New ComboBox()
           cmbProgramName.Top = x * 20
           cmbProgramName.Name = sProgramName & x

           Me.Controls.Add(cmbProgramName)
       Next
   End Sub

 

Create a new form, add a button to it and then put the above code in.

 

georg

[mutant]

And if you use what georg showed you and you want to access them later with code use this:

Dim ctrl As Control
For Each ctrl In Me.Controls
  If TypeOf ctrl Is ComboBox
       If ctrl.Name = "Combo1" 'or whatever number and name you set to it
              'Do something to the combobox
       End If
  End If
Next

[Heiko]

Not exactly :-)

 

You need to program a recursion, I think.

 

me.controls only contains the "top level" controls. More often than not these are GroupBoxes and panels.

[mutant]

Me.Controls contains all controls on the form :)

[Heiko]

I have experienced differently :)

 

(Not starting at form-level, though, but on a tabpage)

[mutant]

Oh, you mean tab controls. It wont contain the tabs as they belong to the tabcontrol, not the form. I thought you meant that you need recursion for every control thats not a container. You only need recursion for those that have their own child controls.

[a_jam_sandwich]

same for anything that is a parant to other controls these inc Groupbox, panel...

 

Andy

[Heiko]

As I said.

I suppose :)

[divil]

Every control can be a container, so you'd want to check every control's Controls collection.

[JCreationsInc]

woa nelly

 

I should check my posted threads more often. I found the solution right after posting this thread here is what I used...

 

'In the load event of the form:
Dim DynamicCombo As New ComboBox()

'Set the properties and display the control
DynamicCombo.Name = "PoopList"
DynamicCombo.DropDownStyle = ComboBoxStyle.DropDownList
DynamicCombo.Items.Add("First List Item")
DynamicCombo.Items.Add("Second List Item")
DynamicCombo.Items.Add("Third List Item")
DynamicCombo.SelectedIndex = 0
Me.Controls.Add(DynamicCombo)
DynamicCombo.Show()

'This code is in the skin drawing procedure of my class:
'Loop through all the controls on the window and get our control
Dim OurCombo As Integer, ComboName As ComboBox
For OurCombo = 0 To ControlCount - 1
   If Window.Controls.Item(OurCombo).Name = "PoopList" Then
       ComboName = Window.Controls.Item(OurCombo)
   End If
Next

'Get the combobox Properties
ComboName.Left = "10"
ComboName.Top = "10"
ComboName.Width = "100"
ComboName.BackColor = color.black
ComboName.ForeColor = color.white
ComboName.Font = font.arial

 

It seems like it is working pretty good. Thank you anyways for your help you dudes are groovy baby yeah!