Question

Thanks to help in here I’ve managed to recursively loop through all the controls on my winform and locate my sub classed control but when I try to update my user defined properties _key and _value the object ctrl does not expose them 🙁
I’m using
ctrlContainer below is the calling form passed as this

foreach (Control ctrl in ctrlContainer.Controls)
{
    // code to find my specific sub classed textBox
    // found my control
    // now update my new property _key
    ctrl._key does not exist :(

    I know the ctrl exists and is valid because ctrl.Text = "I've just added this text" works.
    _key is visible when looking at the control in the form designer.
}

Can anyone give me a hint as to what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks.

Answer 1

That is because your reference is of type Control (foreach (Control ctrl), which I’m assuming is not your sub-classed control. That reference will only understand members that belong to it, _key presumably belongs to a derived class. Try this:

foreach (Control ctrl in ctrlContainer.Controls)
{
    // code to find my specific sub classed textBox
    // found my control
    // now update my new property _key
    if (ctrl is MyControl)
    {
        MyControl myControl = (MyControl)ctrl;
        myControl._key = "";
    }
}

Or your can change your iterator to find only instances of your control, as suggested by Sebastian. This would be cleaner code.