How do I access controls in a tabcontrol?

Question

I'm writing an app in C# with the following arrangement of controls on a form.

First, there is a child form which contains a splitcontainer, which comes with two panels, Panel1 on the left and Panel2 on the right. Panel1 contains checkboxes and textboxes. Panel2 contains a tab control. Each tab, when created programatically, contains checkboxes and textboxes.

When I click Save at the top of the child form, all data from all controls in Panel1 save to a binary file correctly. Then the save routine will have to iterate through each tab in the tab control and save data from the checkboxes and textboxes in each tab. Here is what I have so far:

             foreach (TabPage tab in tabControl1.TabPages)
            {
                string Question = tbQuestion.Text(tabControl1.SelectedIndex);
            } 

Unfortunately, tbQuestion.Text ends up with a wiggly line under it, the error message indicating that it "doesn't exist in the current context." The same will happen with all the other controls in each tab. What do I need to do to access the controls in each tab?

Answer 1

Could try something like :

foreach (TabPage tab in tabControl1.TabPages)
{
    Control ctl = tp.Controls.Cast<Control>().Where(c=>c.Name=="tbQuestion").FirstOrDefault();

    string Question = ... ctl.Text;
}

Answer 2

Well if you are creating them programmatically you could do something like

Dictionary<TextBox,Checkbox> questionsAndAnswers = new Dictionary<TextBox,CheckBox>();

then as you create the pairs of controls add an entry. You could go one further and use Dictionary<string,bool>. Another option is to take all that iterating out and bind to a List<T> where T is some class that holds an abstraction of QuestionAnswer, set the binding up programmatically and your load and save code need only deal with a simple List<T> It sounds more complex, but you can remove an extraordinary amount of very fragile code with it. Better still you can knock up a UserControl and build all this behaviour in preferably via an interface.

Some ideas from harsh lessons learned anyway.

All you need is a new requirement for a multiple choice question (single or multiple choice etc) or just a couple of panels inside your current tab to get some resizing behaviour and all of sudden

(CheckBox)Form.Controls[0].Controls[2].Controls[8] is not only less than comprehensible, it's broke...