How to create an array with textboxes in Visual Basic 6.0

Question

I am working on a very old visual basic project. I have to rewrite the load and save function of the project. Therefore I wanted to create an array of controls which have all relevant textboxes and checkboxes included. I want to iterate through that array to be able to save the data into a textfile or load from it.

I have looked on the internet of how you can define those arrays, but it doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe I am doing something wrong, cause I am not an expert in Visual Basic.

I have tried to make it work this way:

Dim tbList As TextBox = { Form1.Text1, Form1.Text3, _
Form1.Text10, Form1.Text11, Form1.Text12, Form1.Text13, _
Form2.Text1, Form2.Text3, Form2.Text4, Form2.Text5, _
Form2.Text10, Form2.Text11, Form2.Text12, Form2.Text13, _
Form3.Text1, Form3.Text3, Form3.Text4, Form3.Text5, _
Form3.Text10, Form3.Text11, Form3.Text12, Form3.Text13, _
Form3.Text17, Form3.Text18, Form3.Text19, Form3.Text20, _
Form4.Text1, _
Form5.Text1, Form5.Text2, Form5.Text3, _
Form6.Text2, _
Form7.Text2}

Or with a list:

Dim tbList As New List(Of Controls)

The thing is Visual Basic always tells me there are some kind of compiling issues. There is no real explantation for this issue in VB, so I am asking here.

C-Pound Guru · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-22 23:11:24Z

Your code isn't compiling because it is vb.net code. It should go without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that vb6 and vb.net are not the same thing.

If you want to use an array, you will have to dimension the array with a number that is one less than your number of textboxes (if I counted correctly there are 32 in your example):

'// array is zero based so 0 to 31 = 32 items
Dim tbList(31) As TextBox

tbList(0) = Form1.Text1
tbList(1) = Form1.Text3
'//...I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the programmer
tbList(31) = Form7.Text2

Dim i As Integer
Dim tb As TextBox

'// To loop and work with each textbox
For i = 0 To UBound(tbList)
    Set tb = tbList(i)
    '// do something with tb
Next

An easier way to do it, however, is to work with a collection:

Dim tbList As New Collection

tbList.Add Form1.Text1
tbList.Add Form1.Text3
'//...I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the programmer
tbList.Add Form7.Text2

Dim tb As TextBox
'// To loop and work with each textbox
For Each tb In tbList
    '// do something with tb
Next

BobRodes · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-25 19:10:25Z

Yes, you can use a collection if you want to go to the trouble. But an even easier way to work with it is to use VB6's (now obsolete) control array implementation. Most of us were disappointed when we found it was no longer available in .Net!

All you have to do to get control arrays in VB6 is create a bunch of controls with the same name. (They do have to be the same type of control; you can't make arrays of, say, text boxes and combo boxes.) Start with one text box, name it what you want, and copy it. You will be asked if you want to create a control array. Say yes, copy as many as you want. You will notice that the Index property is no longer blank, starting with 0 and incrementing from there. You will also notice that all of the event handlers have an "Index As Integer" argument to them. This way, you can use the same event handler for all of them, evaluating the Index argument to find out which member of your array is firing the event.

Here is the old doc for it. Microsoft makes it hard to find. :)

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