How do I generate instantiation code for object like designer?

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4.00/5 (1 vote)

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The designer in VisualStudio generates code for various GUI objects, like this:

C#

. . .
this.textBox.MaxChars = 1000;
this.textBox.Name = "textBox";
this.textBox.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(168, 235);
. . .

Is there anyway in my application to access this functionality? That is, pass an object to some magical method and get in return an array of strings containing the code to generate the object?

I know I could do this myself with lots of calls to the reflection classes, but I'm hoping that this is an already solved problem. This is for C# 2.0 (VS 2005).

Why? (in response to the requests for clarification):

One of my recently submitted projects to CodeProject (the Spiral TrackBar control) includes an app (SpiralTrackBarExplorer) which allows you to set all of the members for the control and see the results interactively and play with the control.

It would be nice to have a "generate code for this control" button, which could be then cut-and-paste into the user's application.

Many thanks in advance,
Graham

Posted 25-Feb-14 10:57am

Graham Wilson

Updated 25-Feb-14 16:51pm

v2

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 25-Feb-14 17:57pm

Why? why?!
—SA

Graham Wilson 25-Feb-14 22:52pm

I've updated my question and hopefully answered yours.

BillWoodruff 25-Feb-14 20:20pm

To reply to your post meaningfully, I'd need to know more about the scope of what you want to achieve. Are you talking of creating a visual ui with toolbox, drag-drop ? Or, are you talking about something much more modest ?

Graham Wilson 25-Feb-14 22:53pm

I'd added a clarification to my question.

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Dave Kreskowiak · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-25T11:34:00

Solution 1

Yeah, it's solved, inside Visual Studio. The Designer is what does this "magic". There's an old MSDN article on doing it here[^]. It's FAR from a trivial thing to implement!

[EDIT]
In your updated case, the designer solution would be WAY over the top. What you have to do is keep track of those values in your control, which you're already doing!, and then just emit a formatted string that contains the standard code for setting those values. There's no reflection required to do that.

It's really as simple as:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.AppendFormat("\t{0}.SomeProperty = {1}", controlName, somePropertyValue);

Posted 25-Feb-14 11:34am

Dave Kreskowiak

Updated 26-Feb-14 4:04am

v3

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 25-Feb-14 17:58pm

Interesting enough, my 5. If OP really needs it seems questionable to me... :-)
—SA

Dave Kreskowiak 25-Feb-14 22:34pm

I'm not 100% convinced it's what he needs either, but that wasn't really spelled out in the original post. It was more of a "hey, I want this end result" instead of "this is the overall goal. Is this going to be an appropriate solution?" kind of thing.

Graham Wilson 25-Feb-14 22:59pm

Thanks for your solution; I've updated the original question to better explain my end goals.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 25-Feb-14 23:07pm

So typical...
—SA