Question

I am creating a menu with big buttons containing an image, and text. When selected a border is around the button.

The button text is not always the same, and the result of the button click neither.

I have the image name, and text per button set in a struct like this: (there are four of them, but i’ll show 2)

struct ConfigDevSubmenu
    {

        public const string SubMenuBtnText1 = "";
        public const string SubMenuBtnText2 = "text submenu 3 button 1";
        public const string SubMenuBtnText3 = "text submenu 3 button 2";
        public const string SubMenuBtnText4 = "";
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg1 = null;
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg2 = "Settings.png";
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg3 = "LoadFirmware.png";
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg4 = null;
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder1 = "Borderstyle.None";
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder2 = "Borderstyle.FixedSingle";
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder3 = "Borderstyle.FixedSingle";
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder4 = "Borderstyle.None";
    }
    struct AdvancedSubmenu
    {
        public const string SubMenuBtnText1 = "text submenu 4 button 1";
        public const string SubMenuBtnText2 = "text submenu 4 button 2";
        public const string SubMenuBtnText3 = "text submenu 4 button 3";
        public const string SubMenuBtnText4 = "text submenu 4 button 4";
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg1 = "GenerateEncKey.png";
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg2 = "Monitoring.png";
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg3 = "AdvancedSettings.png";
        public const string SubMenuBtnImg4 = "GenerateConfigFile.png";
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder1 = "Borderstyle.FixedSingle";
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder2 = "Borderstyle.FixedSingle";
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder3 = "Borderstyle.FixedSingle";
        public const string SubMenuBtnBorder4 = "Borderstyle.FixedSingle";
    }

I do not think this can be done much easier without using database files.

To create the buttons I have this function which has as argument the which struct it should use, and in a switch case structure each button is created.
But I’ve found myself copy-pasting alot in these functions so this must be possible easier. Therefore I tried something like below, but that does not work. I’d like to know whether it is possible to make that work, and how I should do that.

    private void createButtons(string Struct)
    {
        for (int i = 1; i < 5; i++)
        {
            SubBtnText[i].Text = Struct.SubMenuBtnText[i];
            pictureBoxSubBtn[i].Image = Image.FromFile(Struct.SubMenuBtnImg[i]);
            panelSubBtn[i].BorderStyle = Struct.SubMenuBtnBorder[i];

        }
    }

Any suggetions?

Answer 1

Create a class to hold the button text, image name and border styles – say ButtonData.

Create several lists (or arrays) of ButtonData, one per menu.

You can then iterate over the lists and extract the data.

public class ButtonData
{
   public ButtonData(string text, string image, BorderStyle border)
   {
       Text = text;
       Image = image;
       Border = border;
   }

   public string Text { get; private set; }
   public string Image { get; private set; }
   public BorderStyle Border { get; private set; }
}

var devMenuData = new List<ButtonData> { 
                                  new ButtonData("", null, "Borderstyle.None"), 
                                  new ButtonData("text submenu 3 button 1",
                                                 "Settings.png",
                                                 Borderstyle.FixedSingle), 
                                  ...
                                       };

Your function would something like:

private void CreateButtons(IEnumerable<ButtonData> data)
{
    foreach (var buttonData in data)
    {
        SubBtnText[i].Text = buttonData.Text;
        pictureBoxSubBtn[i].Image = Image.FromFile(buttonData.Image);
        panelSubBtn[i].BorderStyle = buttonData.Border;
    }
}

The above amended function will not work as such, as .NET doesn’t have control arrays. You could create another list/array to iterate over or index through for this to work.