VB.Net: Looping through all form items, including CommonDialogs

Question

Hello everyone!

I'm translating my VB.Net application, and I need to loop through all the controls on my form. Using a recursive function such as

Public Sub TranslateControl(ByVal Ctrl As Control)
    For Each ChildCtrl As Control In Ctrl.Controls
        ChildCtrl.Text = Translate(ChildCtrl.Text)

        If TypeOf ChildCtrl Is Label Then
            CType(ChildCtrl, Label).Tag = Translate(CType(ChildCtrl, Label).Tag)
        End If

        TranslateControl(ChildCtrl)
    Next
End Sub

works very well, but it doesn't include CommonDialog objects, such as FolderBrowser objects. How can I access these objects ? I tried this

    For Each ChildDialog As CommonDialog In Ctrl.Controls
        ChildDialog.Tag = Translate(ChildDialog.Tag)
    Next

But there is obviously an inheritance problem, since CommonDialog objects are not controls.

Is there a way for me to loop through really all the items displayed on my form?

Thanks a lot!

CFP

Answer 1

No, they are components, not controls. Their code actually lives in the shell, they were written in unmanaged C/C++ by Microsoft. The only thing that's managed about them is a small wrapper that makes the necessary API calls to display them and return their result. OpenFileDialog for example.

The very first problem you'll run into is run your code when such a dialog is displayed. It is a dialog, control doesn't return to your program after the ShowDialog() call until the user dismisses it. It is possible with a fair amount of trickery. Check my code in this thread for the approach. As noted, that code will work for any shell dialog, as well as MessageBox.

That gets you the window handle of the dialog. Next, you have to iterate the child windows of the dialog. You can do that with the EnumChildWindows API call. That gives you the window handle of each child, you can then use SendMessage() to do something with the child. Whatever that might be, you didn't specify that in your question.