string to object name

[ScubaS2]

Hi all,
I recently started a new job and have been thrown in the deep with a project. It was all well and good until it was decided that I would develop the windows software on top of everything else. Long story short, I know a little bit about C++.net but not heaps.

I want to be able to address an object using a variable so I can manipulate many text boxes with a for loop.

For example:
System::String^ AString;
int i = 1;
AString = "textBox" + i; // This bit works fine...

Now AString contains the name of the object I want to manipulate but I don't know how to call it...
this->?AString?->Text = "Hello";

What do I put in place of ?AString? or what do I use to achieve the same goal with different code?

Many thanks in advance.

[Duthomhas]

It depends on your GUI system.

For MFC, I don't know, but there should be an associative array somewhere where you can turn a String into a Component^ or Control^ or something.

For example, Borland's VCL defines a components[] property that you can access to get a pointer to the named object.

TLabel* label = (TLabel*)(form->components[ "Label1" ]);

(Granted, I usually do this in Delphi, not C++, but the above snippit demonstrates the idea...)

Look through the component properties of your main form (via your documentation).

Good luck!

[writetonsharma]

if you are talking about mfc..

assosiate CString with a text control
for more manipulations on text box control use CEdit.
to assosiate it with text box do like this:

declare a CEdit/CString type object in .h file,
use

DDX_Control

to assosiate the variable with the text box.

.h file
CEdit m_textbox;

.cpp file:
DDX_Control(pDX,EDT_1,m_textbox); //EDT_1 is the id of the text box. 

hope this is what you are looking for.

[ScubaS2]

I'll give them a go but I'm using CLR not MFC. Sorry I didn't indicate this earlier but I didn't realise that MFC supports the .net library. If you know how it's definitely done in CLR it would help. I should probably have said I'm using Visual Studio 2005 as well.

Thanks for your help so far.

[writetonsharma]

oh.. no idea regarding CLR..
actually i also misread you.. sorry.. :(

[z05DSL3A]

For CLR you could try somthing like:

public ref class Form1 : public System:: Windows:: Forms::Form
{
    // blah blah blah

private: System:: Void someFunc() 
         {
            System::String^ AString;
            int i = 1;
            AString = "textBox" + i;
            Control^ ctrlPtr = FindControl(AString);
            if(ctrlPtr != nullptr)
            {
                ctrlPtr->Text = "SomeText";
            }

         }

private: Control^ FindControl(String^ strControlName)
        {
            if (strControlName->Length == 0 || this->Controls->Find(strControlName, true)->Length == 0)
                return nullptr;

            return this->Controls->Find(strControlName, true)[0];
        }
    
}

[ScubaS2]

I tried the code this morning and it worked and absolute treat. To me that seemed like a lot of code, but that's because I spend most of my time programming microcontrollers and such where efficiency is essential. But windows software design will have none of that.

Thanks a bunch for everyone's help, it made my day today.