Question

I’m dynamically populating a ControlPanel with some controls… Some are DropDowns, some are TextBoxes:

//inputArray is a JsonArray (thus the SelectToken methods)

foreach (var item in inputArray)
{
    //Create Label
    Label LabelTitle = new Label();
    LabelTitle.Text = (string)item.SelectToken("title");
    Panel_Controls.Controls.Add(LabelTitle);

    //Create Control
    if ((string)item.SelectToken("type") == "textinput")
    {
        TextBox TextBox_Control = new TextBox();
        TextBox_Control.ID = (string)item.SelectToken("title");
        Panel_Controls.Controls.Add(TextBox_Control);
    }
    if ((string)item.SelectToken("type") == "dropdown")
    {
        DropDownList DropDown_Control = new DropDownList();
        DropDown_Control.DataSource = dropDownData;
        DropDown_Control.DataBind();
        Panel_Controls.Controls.Add(DropDown_Control);
    }
}

Later on, I need to get the values of the DropDown and Text box fields. I can filter out the Label and other controls. I can’t figure out how to get the values of the Controls within the foreach statement. I’m guessing I need to Cast the control as something that will let me get a .Value property, because the generic Control won’t give me a .Value property.

foreach (Control item in Panel_Controls.Controls)
{
    if (!(item is Label | item is LiteralControl))
    {
        //How can I access the .Value of the controls here?
    }
}

Could someone suggest a good way of getting values from TextBox and DropDowns within the foreach loop?

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

You’ll have to cast item to the appropriate control type to access it’s properties.

if (!(item is Label | item is LiteralControl))
{
      if(item is TextBox)
      {
        TextBox textBox = (TextBox)item;
        string textValue = textBox.Text;
      }
      ...

}