Question

I may be going about this the wrong way, so I’ll set out the full scenario…

I have a DataTable which holds a number of items – like stock items. The data in this table can change, but it’s populated from a database so that it’s a distinct list. I want users to be able to select a number of them and I want to do this by creating a new checkBox object for each item in my DataTable.

So far I have the following (which I know is wrong, but illustrates what I’m trying to get at!):

string cbName = "cbNewTest";
int cbPosition = 24;
int cbTab = 1;

foreach (DataRow row in tblAllTests.Rows)
{
    string cbNewName = cbName + cbTab.ToString();
    this.(cbNewName) = new System.Windows.Forms.CheckBox();
    this.testInfoSplitContainer.Panel2.Controls.Add(this.(cbNewName));

    this.(cbNewName).AutoSize = true;
    this.(cbNewName).Location = new System.Drawing.Point(6, cbPosition);
    this.(cbNewName).Name = cbNewName;
    this.(cbNewName).Size = new System.Drawing.Size(15, 14);
    this.(cbNewName).TabIndex = cbTab;
    this.(cbNewName).Text = row["itemDesc"].ToString();

    cbPosition = cbPosition + 22;
    cbTab = cbTab + 1;
}

So of course the problem is the stuff in the brackets. Essentially, I want this to be whatever is in my string ‘cbNewName’ but I really don’t know how to do this…I’m used to SQL as I’m a database gal, so this probably means I’ve coded this all wrong…

Any help would be very much appreciated…I’m very new to C# (or for that matter, any programming outside a database) so simple terms would be appreciated!

Answer 1

You can create a CheckBox as a variable, just like anything else. No need to assign it to one of the Form‘s properties, which are impossible to generate dynamically regardless:

CheckBox newCheckBox = new CheckBox();

// (Initialize your new CheckBox here, basically exactly as you're
// already doing except instead of this.(cbNewName) you use newCheckBox)

this.testInfoSplitContainer.Panel2.Controls.Add(newCheckBox);

If you need to access it later, since you’re already setting the name, just do:

(CheckBox)this.testInfoSplitContainer.Panel2.Controls["theName"]