Question

I need to traverse all controls and components inside a UserControl I’m developing.
I tried:

public void Traverse(Control cnt)
{
    foreach (Control c in cnt.Controls)
    {
        if (c.HasChildren) Traverse(c);
        Debug.Print(c.Name); // For debugging purpose only
        // My code goes here
    }
}

Problem raises when functions meets a ToolStrip: it has no children, but Items (ToolStripItemCollection: IList, ICollection, IEnumerable).

I don’t care of type: using Reflection I need to set some property, so I feel good having objects as result.
How can I get the name of every component that is inside my UserControl?
Thanks

Answer 1

I’ve written a version that goes through the control’s properties and looks for IComponents that have ICollections on them:

Method:

private void GetControls(ICollection controls, IList<string> names)
{
    foreach (var ctl in controls)
    {
        if (ctl is IComponent)
        {
            var name = ctl.GetType().GetProperty("Name");
            if (name != null)
                names.Add((string) name.GetValue(ctl, null));

            foreach (var property in ctl.GetType().GetProperties())
            {
                var prop = property.GetValue(ctl, null);
                if (prop is ICollection)
                    GetControls((ICollection)prop, names);
            }
        }
    }
}

Called:

var ctlNames = new List<string>();
GetControls(Controls, ctlNames);

I’ve tested this and it seems to find every control on the form. I haven’t tested it for every kind of control and I can’t vouch for how efficient it is.