Question

I have an interface with something like 20 textboxes that I wish to parse (comma separated lists expected).

To avoid writing 20 functions, I’d like to write one function that returns me a string[], which would accept as argument the variable name of the textboxes.

Is that possible without too much hassle ?

Answer 1

The variable name isn’t the way to go, you can probably assign an identifier that is known at runtime to the textbox. I don’tknow what UI toolkit this is (WinForms? ASP.NET? WPF? Silverlight?) but you usually have access to an Id or Tag for the control.

TextBox ageTextBox = new TextBox();
nameTextBox.Tag = "Age";

TextBox shoeSizeTextBox = new TextBox();
shoeSizeTextBox.Tag = "ShoeSize";

Then later

foreach(var ctrl in Controls.OfType<TextBox>.Where(tb => tb.Tag == someTag))
{
    Debug.WriteLine(tb.Tag+" = "+tb.Text); // or output to file etc.      
}