IEnumerable and Recursion using yield return

Question

Hi everyone,

I have an IEnumerable<T> method that I'm using to find controls in a WebForms page.

The method is recursive and I'm having some problems returning the type I want when the yield return is returnig the value of the recursive call.

My code looks as follows:

    public static IEnumerable<Control> 
                               GetDeepControlsByType<T>(this Control control)
    {
        foreach(Control c in control.Controls)
        {
            if (c is T)
            {
                yield return c;
            }

            if(c.Controls.Count > 0)
            {
                yield return c.GetDeepControlsByType<T>();
            }
        }
    }

This currently throws a "Cannot convert expression type" error. If however this method returns type IEnumerable<Object>, the code builds, but the wrong type is returned in the output.

Is there a way of using yield return whilst also using recursion?

Answer 1

Inside a method that returns IEnumerable<T>, yield return has to return T, not an IEnumerable<T>.

Replace

yield return c.GetDeepControlsByType<T>();

with:

foreach (var x in c.GetDeepControlsByType<T>())
{
  yield return x;
}

Answer 2

You need to yield each of the items yielded by the recursive call:

public static IEnumerable<Control> GetDeepControlsByType<T>(this Control control)
{
    foreach(Control c in control.Controls)
    {
        if (c is T)
        {
            yield return c;
        }

        if(c.Controls.Count > 0)
        {
            foreach (Control control in c.GetDeepControlsByType<T>())
            {
                yield return control;
            }
        }
    }
}

Note that there's a cost to recursing in this way - you'll end up creating a lot of iterators, which can create a performance issue if you have a really deep control tree. If you want to avoid that, you basically need to do the recursion yourself within the method, to make sure there's only one iterator (state machine) created. See this question for more details and a sample implementation - but this obviously adds a certain amount of complexity too.

Answer 3

You need to return the items from the enumerator, not the enumerator itself, in your second yield return

public static IEnumerable<Control> GetDeepControlsByType<T>(this Control control)
{
    foreach (Control c in control.Controls)
    {
        if (c is T)
        {
            yield return c;
        }

        if (c.Controls.Count > 0)
        {
            foreach (Control ctrl in c.GetDeepControlsByType<T>())
            {
                yield return ctrl;
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

I think you have to yield return each of the controls in the enumerables.

    public static IEnumerable<Control> GetDeepControlsByType<T>(this Control control)
    {
        foreach (Control c in control.Controls)
        {
            if (c is T)
            {
                yield return c;
            }

            if (c.Controls.Count > 0)
            {
                foreach (Control childControl in c.GetDeepControlsByType<T>())
                {
                    yield return childControl;
                }
            }
        }
    }

Answer 5

I have an elegant way to do this without the penalty of using "for each" inside the recursion, and without having to write sophisticated state machines to manage the recursion yourself. It's a very simple reusable class. See my blog post on that for more details.

Please let me know what you think of my solution.

Thanks, Arnon.