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Populating the Controls Collection

The System.Windows.Forms.Control base class (which is the inheritance chain of the Form type)

defines a property named Controls. This property wraps a custom collection nested in the Control

class named ControlsCollection. This collection (as the name suggests) references each UI element

maintained by the derived type. Like other containers, this type supports a number of methods to

insert, remove, and find a given UI widget (see Table 27-1).

Table 27-1. ControlCollection Members

Member

Meaning in Life

Add()

Used to insert a new Control-derived type (or array of types) in the collection

AddRange()

Clear()

Removes all entries in the collection

Count

Returns the number of items in the collection

GetEnumerator()

Returns the IEnumerator interface for this collection

Remove()

Used to remove a control from the collection

RemoveAt()

When you wish to populate the UI of a Form-derived type, you will typically follow a very pre-

dictable series of steps:

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• Define a member variable of a given UI element within the Form derived class.

• Configure the look and feel of the UI element.

• Add the UI element to the form’s ControlsCollection container via a call to Controls.Add().

Assume you wish to update your MainWindow class to support a File ➤ Exit menu system. Here

are the relevant updates, with code analysis to follow:

class MainWindow : Form

{