Question

I trying to write a method that will look at a wpf usercontrol that contains other wpf usercontrol elements. For example one of the usercontrols contains a datagrid with columns added using xaml. I want to be able to manipulate a named column in the datagrid. I’m trying to use reflection and I can’t find a way to get the internal controls. I’ve tried the different get methods (GetProeprties, GetMembers, GetFields) but can’t find a collection of internal usercontrols. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Have you tried using FindName?

var col = uc.FindName("MyColumn") as DataGridColumn;

Edit: This works in simple cases but for nested UserControls it may not. This being the case you could employ it recursively, here’s some sketchy implementation:

public static object FindNamedObject(FrameworkElement container, string name)
{
    var target = container.FindName(name);
    if (target == null)
    {
        int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(container);
        for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
        {
            var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(container, i) as FrameworkElement;
            if (child != null)
            {
                target = FindNamedObject(child, name);
                if (target != null)
                {
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return target;
}