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 youd want to check every controls 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!