Better way to find control in ASP.NET

Question

I have a complex asp.net form,having even 50 to 60 fields in one form like there is Multiview, inside MultiView I have a GridView, and inside GridView I have several CheckBoxes.

Currently I am using chaining of the FindControl() method and retrieving the child ID.

Now, my question is that is there any other way/solution to find the nested control in ASP.NET.

Answer 1

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);
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

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;
            }
        }
    }
}