Using a string to reference an object.

Question

I am fairly new to C# and have been banging my head on my desk for a couple hours trying to figure this out, I am almost to the point where I think it cannot be done. Here is the problem. I have a series of textfields named in a sequential manner as follows: ex_1_1 ex_1_2 etc... I need to do a fairly large amount of math with these boxes and as the matrix of them spans quite a ways in both dimensions i really don't want to have to hardcode each reference (which is the reason for the naming) I planned on running a for loop and pulling the data out that way. I am getting an error when I try to do this. here is the code I am using for(int i=1; i<7; i++) { tempValue += ('em_1_' + i).Value } now this obviusly blows up because ('em_1_' + i) is a string not an object reference, but what I need is a way to make it reference my textfield. I have done this same thing in several other languages but cannot get it to work. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciaited. thanks ~David

dtmoore · Answer

I got it working using a multi-dimensional array, thanks for the info. ~D

spgilmore · Answer

You could also just create them dynamically and add them to a collection, or put them on a container control and they are automatically put into the components collection. You can then iterate through them and check their name and to determine what you want to do with them. This may or may not be easier or better than control arrays, but you'll have to decide which.

dtmoore · Answer

I checked it out, and that is for a windows form project, I am working with ASP.NET, this looks like it might work, but would be very different, if anyone has an example of this type of thing being done in ASP.NET with c# code behind that would be great. thanks ~David

dtmoore · Answer

ill check it out, thanks.

sunil · Answer

The best way to create controls as above is by way of control arrays (same concept is there in VB 6). You can manipulate, get values etc with control arrays. For detailed article please go through this url. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchcreatingcontrolarraysinvisualbasicnetvisualcnet.asp Hope this helps.

Using a string to reference an object.

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