Windows Forms Creating TextBoxes & Labels Dynamically

richard smith

I have been manually doing this process for quite some time and think that their must be a better way to do such. So here is the back-story. There is a SQL Table that holds 3 fields, QuestionToAsk, Responses, ID - of course pretty self explanatory here, the QuestionToAsk of course would be the label and a question, the Responses would be textboxes and would house any entered response, and the ID is just an ID field. Some sample data from the table would be like so ----

QuestionToAsk ---- Responses ---- ID

Top 5 Movies? Movie1 1

Movie2 2

Movie3 3

Movie4 4

Movie5 5

Fav from top 5? Top5Fav 6

Fav Hobby? FavHobby 7

Top 4 Cars? Car1 8

Car2 9

Car3 10

Car4 11

I have been just manually creating each label and copy/paste the text, and creating the textboxes to be associated with them because I can not find a way to associate the multiple response textboxes with the QuestionToAsk. Meaning, How can I query to see that Top 5 Movies needs 5 textboxes, and Fav from top5 only needs 1, so that I can dynamically create all of the information?

3 Replies

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Selva Ganapathy11y ago
Accepted answer
Hi Richard Smith,
I can modified the demo sample as per dynamic textbox to its relation matrix, Using the Same logic in Editor by using the following code.
public MyEditor(int EditorCount)
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            for (int i = 0; i < EditorCount; i++)
            {
                TextBox text = new TextBox();
                text.Width = 100;
                text.Height = 30;
                text.Left = this.label.Left +( 105 * (i + 1));
                this.Controls.Add(text);
            }
        }
for MyEditor I am using UserControl concept by modifying the Access modifier of the child controls.
Regards,
Selva Ganapathy K
richard smith11y ago
This will generate a 1 to 1 relationship for labels & text boxes. What if I need to generate a 1 to 2 or a 1 to 3 relationship of labels to text boxes as my example above shows?

And all label's should be generated down the left side of the page
label1 textbox1
label2 textbox2
label3 textbox3

Or if there is a 1 to 2 relationship
label1 textbox1 textbox1a
label2 textbox2
label3 textbox3

EDIT -- the MyEditor code you have, what is that, how did you create that? That would be VERY useful for other projects I have.
Selva Ganapathy11y ago

Hi Richard Smith,
You can make use of the following code to generate Textbox and Labels dynamically.

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }
        private void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            GetEditors(Convert.ToInt16(this.textBox1.Text == string.Empty ? "0" : this.textBox1.Text));
        }
        void GetEditors(int count)
        {
            this.panel1.Controls.Clear();
            var left = 0;
            var top = 0;
            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
            {
                MyEditor editor = new MyEditor();
                editor.label.Text = "Label" + (i + 1).ToString();
                editor.textBox.Text = editor.label.Text + "'s Text";
                editor.Left = left;
                editor.Top = top;
                if (editor.Left + editor.Width > (this.panel1.Width - editor.Width))
                {
                    top = top + editor.Height + 5;
                    left = 0;
                }
                else
                {
                    left = left + editor.Width + 5;
                }

                this.panel1.Controls.Add(editor);

            }
        }
    }
}

Regards,
Selva Ganapathy K