Creating 100+ Windows Form Components Using a Loop

Question

Loosing my mind over this - been through many different articles, forums and questions but still can't figure this out.

I'm a programming noob, and I am currently using IronPython to create a Windows Form application. Visual Studio 2015 is my IDE.

I am wanting to create 100+ label elements on the main form from an array which has been loaded in from a CSV. The array works fine, the code for that is here:

with open('sites.csv', 'rb') as f:
reader = csv.reader(f)
for row in reader:
    sites.append(row[0])

The array looks like this: Sitename 1,Sitename 2,Sitename 3,Sitename 4 etc.

Inside my "MyForm" class which is where I create my child controls before showing the form I have a loop to go through this array and create a label for each sitename entry in the list.

    #Create Label for each Site
    for s in sites:

        sitename = str(s) #Convert Name into a String
        elementname = sitename.replace(" ","") + "Label"
        elementname = Label()
        elementname.Name = str(elementname)
        elementname.Parent = self
        elementname.Location = Point(lastx,lasty)

        counter = counter + counter
        lasty = lasty + 10

The variable sitename will convert the current site name entry in the list to a string value with any spaces (e.g. Northern Site).

The variable elementname takes the sitename variable and removes the spaces and adds the word Label to the end of the name.

I then try and create a label object on the form with with the name held in the elementname variable.

Although this doesn't cause an error or exception when I run, the result only outputs one label with the name of first entry in the array/list.

I might be coming this from the wrong angle. I can see why it isn't working by stepping through the code. It creates every single label with the variable elementnamenot the sitenamelabel I was intending it to.

I've attempted to generate variables dynamically using a dictionary but this didn't seem to work, and attempted to create an array of label's on the form and then populate these with the loop but this didn't seem to work.

Answer 1

You will have to actually add every label you have created to the form. A good way to do this is to create a list of labels and add them at the end using the AddRange method.

labels = [] # create a blank list to hold all labels
for s in sites:

    sitename = str(s) #Convert Name into a String
    elementname = sitename.replace(" ","") + "Label"
    elementname = Label()
    elementname.Name = str(elementname)
    elementname.Parent = self
    elementname.Location = Point(lastx,lasty)

    labels.append(elementname) # add each element to the list

    counter = counter + counter
    lasty = lasty + 10

# Add all labels to the form
MyForm.Controls.AddRange(System.Array[Label](labels))