C# Referencing numbered Objects

CountingCrows

Hi all,

I've got 10 Textboxs which I need to populate.
I'm looking for a more efficient way of doing this than using 10 statements such as;

txtMsgLine1.Text = Object.MessageLine1;
txtMsgLine2.Text = Object.MessageLine2; ...... etc.

Is this possible, maybe via a loop?

BTW I can change the textboxs, i.e I could put them in an array but I can't change the object properties - e.g MessageLine1.

NeverSayDie

Well, if your TextBoxes have a common naming scheme like that, and assuming this is ASP.NET, you could use FindControl() calls to access them dynamically instead of directly.

If you can't change/extend the implementation of your object that stores the text though (exposing the message lines as a List<> of strings or some such) then you're pretty much out of luck. You probably could enumerate its properties at runtime using something from the Reflection/Type namespaces - GetType() and GetProperty() spring to mind - but tbh that may make for less readable and less performant code than you've already got.

Another option might involve using extension methods (assuming the newer versions of C#, Framework 3.0 onwards I think) to add an interface that will iterate through the properties and expose them in a collection of some sort. Don't know too much about them, but AFAIK you can do that sort of thing. Again, may not be a good idea in terms of readable code.