How to iterate through set of custom control objects in WPF?

Question

In a window of my WPF application I have a number of objects which dirived from a custom control:

...
<MyNamespace:MyCustControl x:Name="x4y3" />
<MyNamespace:MyCustControl x:Name="x4y4" />
<MyNamespace:MyCustControl x:Name="x4y5" />
<MyNamespace:MyCustControl x:Name="x4y6" />
<MyNamespace:MyCustControl x:Name="x4y7" />
...

In my code I can easily reference each of them individually by name:

x1y1.IsSelected = true;

How, in my code, could I iterate through whole set of them in loop?

foreach (... in ???)
{
 ....

}

Answer 1

You can use VisualTreeHelper or LogicalTreeHelper to scan all the content of your Window or Page and locate the specific controls (maybe by checking if their type is MyCustControl

private IEnumerable<MyCustControl> FindMyCustControl(DependencyObject root)
{
    int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(root);
    for (int i = 0; i < count; ++i)
    {
        DependencyObject child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(root, i);
        if (child is MyCustControl)
        {
            yield return (MyCustControl)child;
        }
        else
        {
            foreach (MyCustControl found in FindMyCustControl(child))
            {
                yield return found;
            }
        }
    }
}