Find WPF control by Name

Question

I'm after some help finding the best way to refer to controls that have been programmtically built in C#

If I pre include a label in XAML and name it marketInfo then in code I can set the Tag property with something like

marketInfo.Tag = timeNow;

However, I'm building controls and assigning each a name using something similar to

System.Windows.Controls.Label lbl = new System.Windows.Controls.Label();
lbl.Content = market.name + " - " + DateTime.Now.ToLocalTime().ToLongTimeString();
lbl.HorizontalContentAlignment = System.Windows.HorizontalAlignment.Left;
lbl.Height = 40;
lbl.Name = @"_" + "marketInfo" + countMarket;

How do I refer to these controls from another method? I've read a few posts which suggest using the visualtreehelper but this appears to require looping controls to find a particular control. Is there a way to access a control by name to avoid looping?

eg something similar to

//pseudo code
SomeControl("_marketInfo5").Tag = timeNow;

Thank you

Answer 1

There's at least two ways to do that:

• Use the FindName method of the parent container to find the control (but it'll internally involve looping, like the visualtreehelper)

• Create a dictionary to store a reference for each control you create

  var controls = new Dictionary<string, FrameworkElement>();
  controls.Add("_marketInfo5", lbl);
  

  Then you can do:

  controls["_marketInfo5"].Tag = timeNow;
  

Answer 2

You can use XamlQuery for finding your controls at run-time.XamlQuery In CodePlex

XamlQuery.Search(RegisterGrid, "Label[Name=_marketInfo5]").SetValue(Control.TagProperty, timeNow);