UserControl on Form and other UserControl

Question

Hi,

I have a custom control that holds a list of controls in the Controls-collection. I want to display one control of these  dynamically on a form. So I open the form and add the control to the Controls-collection of the form.

Problem: When the form closes, the control on the form is disposed and removed from the Controls-Collection of my custom control.

 

How can I reuse a control so that the same instance can be held in my custom control and displayed dynamically on a form that pops up when the user presses a button. I tried to change the parent but the controls is disposed lso when closing the form.

Thanx and kind regards

Matthias

 

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Matthias (CTO PFGrid) winforms.pfgrid.com

Answer 1

You cannot.  That behavior is by design.  A control can belong to only one Controls collection at a time.  If you could, what value should the Control.Parent property be?  It is not an array.  It should have been removed from the custom control as soon as you added it to a new collection.  Test and verify.  Controls are not serializable either. 

I have not tried this.  You might try removing the control from the one collection and putting it into another, though. But, it is a practice that I would not recommend. You will run into issues with event delegates associated with the control, which would cause stuff to hang around in memory and not get disposed in a timely fashion. 

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Answer 2

Like asking how can I be in two places at the same time.  Takes two instances or a magician.

Answer 3

As the others have said, exactly what you ask is impossible.  Perhaps you asked the question though, thinking this was a way to solve some requirement, and the requirement is what you should state.  Others may have had the same requirement as you and can suggest an alternative.

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Mike