Referencing Controls on ASP.Net page

[Max Peck]

cjard,

The idea you posted pointed me in the right direction. It took a little more work to deal with walking the control tree to get this working properly but now my library is proud owner to a new routine which will be very useful.

/// <summary>
/// Web Version:
/// 
/// Builds a dictionary containing the references to all controls in the specified controls
/// container so they can be referenced by constructed string names.  This provides the ability
/// to build sections of controls and reference them similarly to the way they could have been
/// with control arrays back in the VB6 days.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="container">Object containing the controls to be discovered.</param>
/// <param name="list">Dictionary into which the references should be placed.</param>
/// 
public void BuildControlList(System.Web.UI.ControlCollection container, Dictionary<string, System.Web.UI.Control> list) {
	foreach (System.Web.UI.Control c in container) {
		//
		//  If the current control has a set of controls, recurse and scan the collection.
		//
		if (c.Controls.Count > 0)
			BuildControlList(c.Controls, list);
		//
		//  If this is a leaf node in the controls collection, record its reference in the
		//  dictionary if its ID is not null.
		//
		else {
			if (c.ID != null)
				list[c.ID] = c;
		}
	}
}

Using that routine in my library now enables me to populate the "control array" I have set up in the following fashion, exactly what I had in mind.

//
// There will be up to 5 categories to list.
//
string key = "";	// Use to build the control names to reference.
	
for (int i = 0; i < catList.Count; ++i) {
	var CLR = (CategoryLedgerRecord) catList[i];
	key = "cboCat" + (i+1).ToString();
	((DropDownList) cList[key]).Text = CLR.CategoryName;
	key = "txtAmount" + (i+1).ToString();
	((TextBox) cList[key]).Text = CLR.Amount.ToString();
	key = "txtComment" + (i+1).ToString();
	((TextBox) cList[key]).Text = CLR.Comments;
}

Works perfectly. Thanks for your feedback.

-Max