Better way to find control in ASP.NET
If you're looking for a specific type of control you could use a recursive loop like this one - http://weblogs.asp.net/eporter/archive/2007/02/24/asp-net-findcontrol-recursive-with-generics.aspx
Here's an example I made that returns all controls of the given type
/// <summary>
/// Finds all controls of type T stores them in FoundControls
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
private class ControlFinder<T> where T : Control
{
private readonly List<T> _foundControls = new List<T>();
public IEnumerable<T> FoundControls
{
get { return _foundControls; }
}
public void FindChildControlsRecursive(Control control)
{
foreach (Control childControl in control.Controls)
{
if (childControl.GetType() == typeof(T))
{
_foundControls.Add((T)childControl);
}
else
{
FindChildControlsRecursive(childControl);
}
}
}
}
Late as usual. If anyone is still interested in this there are a number of related SO questions and answers. My version of recursive extension method for resolving this:
public static IEnumerable<T> FindControlsOfType<T>(this Control parent)
where T : Control
{
foreach (Control child in parent.Controls)
{
if (child is T)
{
yield return (T)child;
}
else if (child.Controls.Count > 0)
{
foreach (T grandChild in child.FindControlsOfType<T>())
{
yield return grandChild;
}
}
}
}
All the highlighted solutions are using recursion (which is performance costly). Here is cleaner way without recursion:
public T GetControlByType<T>(Control root, Func<T, bool> predicate = null) where T : Control
{
if (root == null) {
throw new ArgumentNullException("root");
}
var stack = new Stack<Control>(new Control[] { root });
while (stack.Count > 0) {
var control = stack.Pop();
T match = control as T;
if (match != null && (predicate == null || predicate(match))) {
return match;
}
foreach (Control childControl in control.Controls) {
stack.Push(childControl);
}
}
return default(T);
}